"Some other time," Michael said.
"I understand you're a very serious young man," Arney said doggedly. "Let's talk about Art. How did my play go tonight?"
"All right," said Michael.
"No," said Arney, "I won't talk about my play. I said Art and I know what you think of my play. Everybody in New York knows what you think about my play. You shoot your mouth off too goddamn much and if it was up to me I'd fire you. I am being friendly at the moment, but I'd fire you."
"Listen, Pal…" the man in the blue-serge suit began.
"You talk to him," Arney said to Parrish. "He's a Communist, too. That's why I'm not profound enough for him. All you have to do to be profound these days is pay fifteen cents a week for the New Masses." He put his arm around Parrish lovingly. "This is the kind of Communist I like, Whitacre," he said. "Mr Parrish, Mr Sunburned Parrish. He got sunburned in sunny Spain. He went to Spain and he got shot at in Madrid and he's going back to Spain and he's going to get killed there. Aren't you, Mr Parrish?"
"Sure, Pal," Parrish said.
"That's the kind of Communist I like," Arney said loudly.
"Mr Parrish is here to get some money and some volunteers to go back and get shot with him in sunny Spain. Instead of being so goddamn profound at these fairy parties in New York, Whitacre, why don't you go be profound in Spain with Mr Parrish?"
"If you don't keep quiet," Michael started to say, but a tall, white-haired woman with a regal, dark face swept between him and Arney and calmly and without a word knocked the teacup out of Arney's hand. It broke on the floor in a small, china tinkle. Arney looked at her angrily for a moment, then grinned sheepishly, ducking his head, looking shiftily at the floor.
"Hello, Felice," he said.
"Get away from the bar," Felice said.
"Just drinking a little tea," Arney said. He turned and shuffled off, fat and ageing, his grey hair lank and sweating against his large head.
"Mr Arney does not drink," Felice said to the bartender.
"Yes, Ma'am," said the bartender.
"Christ," said Felice to Michael, "I could kill him. He's driving me crazy. And fundamentally he's such a sweet man."
"A darling man," Michael said.
"Was he awful?" Felice asked anxiously.
"Darling," Michael said.
"Nobody'll invite him any place any more and everyone ducks him…" Felice said.
"I can't imagine why," said Michael.
"Even so," said Felice sadly, "it's awful for him. He sits in his room brooding, telling everyone who'll listen to him that he's a has-been. I thought this would be good for him and I could keep an eye on him." She shrugged, looking after Arney's rumpled, retreating figure. "Some men ought to have their hands cut off at the wrist when they reach for their first drink." She picked up her skirts in a courtly, old-fashioned gesture, and went off after the playwright in a rustle of taffeta.
"I think," Michael said, "I could stand a drink."
"Me, too," said Laura.
"Pal," said Mr Parrish.
They stood silently at the bar, watching the bartender fill their glasses.
"The abuse of alcohol," Mr Parrish said in a solemn, preacher-like voice, as he reached for his glass, "is the one thing that puts Man above the animal."
They all laughed and Michael raised his glass to Mr Parrish before he drank.
"To Madrid," Parrish said, in an offhand, everyday way, and Laura said, "To Madrid," in a hushed, breathy voice. Michael hesitated, feeling the old uneasiness, before he, too, said, "To Madrid."
They drank.
"When did you get back?" Michael asked. He felt uncomfortable, talking about it.
"Four days ago," Parrish said. He lifted the glass to his lips again. "You have very good liquor in this country," he said, grinning. He drank steadily, refilling his glass every five minutes, getting a little redder as time went by, but showing no other effects.
"When did you leave Spain?" Michael asked.
"Two weeks ago."
Two weeks ago, Michael thought, on the frozen roads, with the cold rifles and the makeshift uniforms and the planes overhead and the new graves. And now he's standing here in a blue suit like a truck-driver at his own wedding, rattling the ice cubes in his drink, with people talking about the last picture they made and what the critics said and what the doctor thought about the baby's habit of sleeping with his fists in his eyes, and a man with a guitar singing fake Southern ballads in the corner of the room in the heavy-carpeted, crowded, rich apartment eleven storeys up in the unmarked, secure building, with a view of the Park through the tall windows, and the magenta girl with three breasts over the bar. And in a little while he would go down to the docks on the river that you could see from the windows and get on a boat and start back. And there were no marks on him of what he had been through, no hints in the good-natured, clumsy way in which he behaved of what was ahead of him.
"… money is the important thing," Parrish was saying to Laura, "and political pressure. We can get plenty of guys who want to fight. But the British Government's impounded all the Loyalist gold in London, and Washington 's really helping Franco. We have to sneak our fellows in, and it takes bribing and passage money and stuff, like that. So one day we were in the line outside University City, and it was cold, sweet God, it would freeze the nipples off a whale's belly, and they came to me and they said, 'Parrish, me lad, you're just wasting ammunition here anyway, and we haven't seen you hit a Fascist yet. So we decided, you're an eloquent lying son-of-a-bitch, go back to the States and tell some big, juicy, heartbreaking stories about the heroes of the immortal International Brigade in the front line of the fight against the Fascists. And come back here with your pockets loaded.' So I get up at meetings and just let my imagination ramble, green and free. Before you know it, the people are dying with emotion and generosity, and what with the dough rolling in and all the girls, I think maybe I have found my true profession in the fight for liberty." He grinned, his brilliantly even false teeth shining happily in his face, and he pushed his empty glass towards the bartender. "Want to hear some bloody tales of the horrible war for freedom in tortured Spain?"
"No," said Michael, "not with that introduction."
"The truth," Parrish said, suddenly sober and unsmiling, "the truth is not for the likes of these." He swung round and surveyed the room. For the first time, Michael could sense, in the cold, harsh, measuring eyes, something of what Parrish had been through. "The men running, the young boys that came five thousand miles suddenly surprised that they are actually dying, there, right there, themselves, with a bullet in their own sweet bellies. The French, stinking up the border and accepting bribes to let men walk on bleeding feet through the Pyrenees in the middle of the winter. The crooks and fourflushers and smart operators everywhere. On the docks. In the offices. Right up in battalion and company, right up next to you on the front line. The nice boys who see their pals get it and suddenly say, 'I must have made a mistake. This is different from the way it looked at Dartmouth.'"
A little, plump, forty-year-old woman in a school-girlish pink dress came up to the bar and took Laura's arm. "Laura, darling," she said, "I've been looking for you. It's your turn."
"Oh," Laura said, turning to the blonde woman, "I'm sorry if I kept you waiting, but Mr Parrish was so interesting." Michael winced a little as Laura said "interesting". Mr Parrish merely smiled at both women with an even, impartial lust.
"I'll be back in a few minutes," Laura told Michael. "Cynthia's been reading fortunes for the women and she's going to do mine now."