'This is positively the last one for me!' Mary Jane called after her.
'Like hell it is. Who called who? And who came two hours late? You're gonna stick around till I'm sick of you. The hell with your lousy career.'
Mary Jane threw back her head and roared again, but Eloise had already gone into the kitchen.
With little or no wherewithal for being left alone in a room, Mary Jane stood up and walked over to the window. She drew aside the curtain and leaned her wrist on one of the crosspieces between panes, but, feeling grit, she removed it, rubbed it clean with her other hand, and stood up more erectly. Outside, the filthy slush was visibly turning to ice. Mary Jane let go the curtain and wandered back to the blue chair, passing two heavily stocked bookcases without glancing at any of the titles. Seated, she opened her handbag and used the mirror to look at her teeth. She closed her lips and ran her tongue hard over her upper front teeth, then took another look.
'It's getting so icy out,' she said, turning. 'God, that was quick.
Didn't you put any soda in them?'
Eloise, with a fresh drink in each hand, stopped short. She extended both index fingers, gun-muzzle style, and said, 'Don't nobody move. I got the whole damn place surrounded.'
Mary Jane laughed and put away her mirror.
Eloise came forward with the drinks. She placed Mary Jane's insecurely in its coaster but kept her own in hand. She stretched out on the couch again. 'Wuddaya think she's doing out there?' she said. 'She's sitting on her big, black butt reading `The Robe.' I dropped the ice trays taking them out. She actually looked up annoyed.'
'This is my last. And I mean it,' Mary Jane said, picking up her drink. 'Oh, listen! You know who I saw last week? On the main floor of Lord & Taylor's?'
'Mm-hm,' said Eloise, adjusting a pillow under her head. 'Akim Tamiroff.'
'Who?' said Mary Jane. 'Who's he?'
'Akim Tamiroff. He's in the movies. He always says, `You make beeg joke--hah?' I love him. . . . There isn't one damn pillow in this house that I can stand. Who'd you see?'
'Jackson. She was--'
'Which one?'
'I don't know. The one that was in our Psych class, that always--'
'Both of them were in our Psych class.'
'Well. The one with the terrific--'
'Marcia Louise. I ran into her once, too. She talk your ear off?'
'God, yes. But you know what she told me, though? Dr. Whiting's dead.
She said she had a letter from Barbara Hill saying Whiting got cancer last summer and died and all. She only weighed sixty-two pounds. When she died. Isn't that terrible?'
'No.'
'Eloise, you're getting hard as nails.'
'Mm. What else'd she say?'
'Oh, she just got back from Europe. Her husband was stationed in Germany or something, and she was with him. They had a forty-seven-room house, she said, just with one other couple, and about ten servants. Her own horse, and the groom they had, used to be Hitler's own private riding master or something. Oh, and she started to tell me how she almost got raped by a colored soldier. Right on the main floor of Lord & Taylor's she started to tell me--you know Jackson. She said he was her husband's chauffeur, and he was driving her to market or something one morning. She said she was so scared she didn't even--'
'Wait just a second.' Eloise raised her head and her voice. 'Is that you, Ramona?'
'Yes,' a small child's voice answered.
'Close the front door after you, please,' Eloise called.
'Is that Ramona? Oh, I'm dying to see her. Do you realize I haven't seen her since she had her--'
'Ramona,' Eloise shouted, with her eyes shut, 'go out in the kitchen and let Grace take your galoshes off.'
'All right,' said Ramona. 'C'mon, Jimmy.'
'Oh, I'm dying to see her,' Mary Jane said. 'Oh, God! Look what I did. I'm terribly sorry, El.'
'Leave it. Leave it,' said Eloise. 'I hate this damn rug anyway. I'll get you another.'
'No, look, I have more than half left!' Mary Jane held up her glass.
'Sure?' said Eloise. 'Gimme a cigarette.'
Mary Jane extended her pack of cigarettes, saying 'Oh, I'm dying to see her. Who does she look like now?'
Eloise struck a light. 'Akim Tamiroff.'
'No, seriously.'
'Lew. She looks like Lew. When his mother comes over, the three of them look like triplets.' Without sitting up, Eloise reached for a stack of ashtrays on the far side of the cigarette table. She successfully lifted off the top one and set it down on her stomach. 'What I need is a cocker spaniel or something,' she said. 'Somebody that looks like me.'
