“That's good advice,” Matthews said. He had ordered a glass of Pouilly-Fuissé, which Beatrice had immediately begun calling “foolish pussy.” Both Beatrice and Helen, who were again locked in an intensely private conversation, occasionally looked up to refer to Matthews’ “foolish pussy”—Helen with a blazing smile that seemed to him feverish and hot.
“Have some more foolish pussy, Bill,” Helen practically shouted, then laughed noisily, her mouth open so Matthews could see her tongue, wide and flat and café-au-lait-colored — a color he knew doctors associated with illness. The tongue, his mother had always said, the tongue tells the story of your health. Helen's tongue wasn't telling a good story.
Rex, it became clear, had ordered everything for everybody — which included more martinis, big iceberg salads with beefsteak tomatoes and onion slabs drenched in white vinegar, continent-sized sirloins with two accompanying Idahos on platters all by themselves. A boat full of butter, sour cream, chives, bacon crumbles, steak sauces, horseradish, mustard and ketchup was set in the middle of the table on a lazy Susan with three previously aired bottles of Côtes du Rhône. Rex announced that if anyone wanted anything else, they only had to ask for it, “just as long as it isn't poulet and haricots verts.”
“Really. If I don't eat two of these a week, I get goddamn anemic,” Beatrice said, sawing straight into her red meat, holding her fork like a shoehorn. Beatrice was dressed in the same black bohemian outfit she'd had on in the Eiffel Tower; and because she was drunk now and seemed irritable, she looked, Matthews thought, like the picture of an anemic person.
Rex, on the other hand, seemed to have grown jollier and much more companionable as the day and now the night wore on. He was dressed like somebody headed for a college football game, a big red crewneck sweater over a green plaid sport shirt and a pair of brown corduroys — clothes Matthews hadn't noticed earlier because of the car coat. He'd refashioned his hair transplant so it didn't make him look as absurd — though his big-browed forehead still appeared tender and slightly angry in spots.
“It must be a real burden to have the compulsion to write,” Rex said confidentially, his mouth full.
“No, it really isn't,” Matthews said, trying to eat his own steak and keep eye contact with Rex. The noise in Clancy's rose and fell like a tide. New people constantly came through the door, people the other diners knew, and a clamor would crescendo and then fall off. Everybody seemed to be shouting in English, though he and Rex were able to talk under the roar by getting closer. Rex, he noticed, had on some loud minty aftershave that seemed familiar — also something his father wore.
“I guess all your family are writers too,” Rex said.
“No, they're in the furniture business in Cleveland,” Matthews said. “I've only written one book, and I don't think it's very good. So you couldn't really call me a writer. Not yet, anyway.”
“I see,” Rex said. “I guess it's all just personal expression.”
“Rex traces his family directly back to Adam and Eve,” Beatrice said. She'd been talking to Helen but listening to them. Parentage was obviously an issue she liked to bring up at Rex's expense.
“She's jealous because my parents had last names,” Rex said, and pushed his big lips out and made a juicy, insolent kiss at Beatrice.
“Right. Like Zigolowsky and Prdozilewcza — the ones you don't need many vowels for. Mountjoy's his stage name. I hardly need say that, though, I guess.”
The din in Clancy's rose and fell again, and somewhere, apparently in the room with them, a dog started barking. Several people seated near Clancy's big, white-flocked Christmas tree started laughing. “Gordon,” someone said. “Here, Gordon.” There was another brisk bark, then a squeal of sudden intense pain.
“French people,” Rex said, straining his big neck around to find the offenders. “Yep, yep, there they are,” he said. “I see 'em. Four of 'em with their fuckin’ pooch.”
“Gordon. Great.” Beatrice looked disgusted. In the bright restaurant light, Matthews could see that Beatrice's skin was more leathery and tough-looking than he'd thought. He wondered how old she really was. Once again he felt ridiculously young, though he was thirty-seven and already had an ex-wife, an ex-profession and a daughter he never saw. Rex and Beatrice and even to some extent Helen seemed like his parents’ age and, much like his parents, almost completely unreachable.
“The UN's a loada crap. I know that,” Rex was saying in answer to some remark of Helen's about differing nationalities needing to get along better. Helen was a strong believer in the UN.
“Oh, let's don't get him started on the UN,” Beatrice said, and rolled her eyes. She decided to have another big gulp of her martini. “Or the EU. Another of his big all-time faves.”
“Yeah. Don't get me started on that,” Rex said, inserting lettuce into his big mouth and breathing a heavy breath at the same time.
“Charley knows all about Negroes. The ones who came to Paris, anyway,” Helen said. “He was once a prof. He can tell you who wrote what and where they lived and why, all that kind of thing. He doesn't look black, does he?”
“You can't always tell,” Beatrice said. “They're not like the French — visible for miles in every direction.”
“I thought you said you were a novelist,” Rex said, head down, negotiating a slice of meat onto a square chunk of potato with the intention of eating them as one.
“I didn't say that,” Matthews said, shaking his head.
“Who said it, then?” Rex said, lifting the loaded fork to his mouth.
“And who cares?” Beatrice said.
“Charley's a novel-least,” Helen said, her eyes hot. “I haven't read his ro-man yet. But I'm going to. I want to see if I'm in it. Part of it's set in Paris.”
“You're not in it,” Matthews said, feeling in a hurry to eat, though with no idea what to do when he was finished. Helen had to be in pain, he thought. That was why she was acting agitated — solicitous one second, ready to turn on him the next. She was also drunk and undoubtedly taking painkillers.
“Is Josephine Baker in it?” Beatrice said, going on eating.
“That's who I was thinking of too,” Helen said.
“No,” Matthews said. “It's all made up. No real people are in it.” Everything he said sounded asinine. He wished he could shut up, finish his meal and take Helen home.
“I thought they only let black people teach that stuff,” Beatrice said. “Of course, I've been over here so long I've forgotten what happens at home.”