Hot Night in the City

blades and sly old rogues.'

'Well... maybe.' Hm-m, perhaps there was more to this fellow than a handsome face, and that thick curly hair, and those liquid Basque eyes, and that mouth with its upward—'But I'll bet anything that your women are transparent stereotypes, as in all farces: the Domineering Wife; the Pert, Desirable Soubrette; the Volcanic, Seething Femme Fatale; the Innocent, Empry-Headed Ingenue; the Flapping, Fluttering—'

'It's true that playwrights use stock characters to—'

'Don't you try to wriggle out of it by claiming they're just figures of speech!'

'Figures of speech?'

'All right, all right! So I've never grasped just what figures of speech are. Is that a crime? Is it a disgrace not to know the difference between a metaphor and a hyperbole and an anagram and a litotes and a—?'

'An anagram is not a figure of speech.'

'Thank God something isn't.'

'Sh-h-h. They'll think were having our first quarrel.' He smiled.

'You think this is all very funny, don't you.'

'I think it's good material for a farce. A social farce, of course. A farce of Impelling Social Significance. I could have a character like you: charming, determined, fiery, spouting all your suffragette stuff. While the dignified, understanding, oddly attractive playwright looks calmly into her flashing eyes and—'

'...My suffragette stuff?'

'Well, you know what I mean.'

She was prevented from telling him that she did not know what he meant, and didn't care to learn, when the waiter came to replace the soup tureen with a large platter of steamed oysters, for it was almost New Years, the traditional season for oysters.

He applied himself with dexterity to liberating the delicious molluscs from their shells, but after the first three, he suddenly realized she was not eating.

'What's wrong? I thought you were hungry.'

'I'm famished. I haven't had a decent meal since we received that telegram from Sophie, announcing her intention to marry the brother of an ink slinger who churns out low farces.'

'Well, if you're so hungry, why aren't you eating?' He leaned forward and smiled into her eyes as he whispered in his most 'new-husbandly' voice, 'You wouldn't want people to think you can't eat because you're all fluttery with anticipation, would you?' He pumped his eyebrows.

Her eyes hardened and she whispered, 'I am not eating because one cannot eat oysters with one's gloves on.'

'In that case,' he said in a caressing tone, but separating his words carefully as though speaking to the village idiot, 'why don't you take your gloves off?'

She laid her hand over his and smiled up into his eyes. 'I don't take them off because...' she pinched that particularly excruciating spot on the back of the hand known only to girls who have had to learn to avenge the teasing of older brothers '...because, stupid, I'm not wearing a wedding ring. And if there's anything I'd find more repellent than these people thinking I'm your wife, it would be their thinking I'm your mistress.' She hissed this last word as she twisted the pinch, hard.

'Ai-i-i!' He snatched his hand from beneath hers and rubbed the back of it, mute accusation in his wounded eyes. 'So it's the old she-can't-take-off-her-glove-because-she-isn't-wearing-a-ring problem, is it? All right, I'll show you what a clever farce writer can do. Hm-m-m.' His focus seemed to turn inward as he ransacked his imagination for a ploy that would—ah!

'Take off your gloves,' he said.

'But, I—'

'Please just do as I say. Take off your gloves.'

Reluctantly, she drew off first her right glove, then the revealing left.

'Now just follow my lead,' he whispered; then aloud, he said, 'Goodness gracious me! Where is your ring, darling?'

Her eyes narrowed. 'If this is some vicious stunt meant to embarrass me...' She lifted her forefinger and pointed at his heart.

All around them, ears that had been straining in their direction since they sat down (and particularly since his heartfelt 'ai-i-i!') now fairly vibrated, as bodies leaned towards them, although no one was so obvious as to actually turn and look.

'I told you, darling heart,' he continued aloud, 'that Grandma's ring was too large for your dainty finger. But, impatient little imp that you are, you couldn't wait until I had the jeweller... ah... smallen it, could you?' He wrinkled his nose at her as he picked her gloves up from the table.

'Smallen it?' she echoed, promising herself she would pay him back for that 'impatient little imp' business. And as for his nose wrinkling...

'Now what am I going to tell Mother? She'll be heartbroken to learn that Granny's ring has been— Well, I'll be hornswaggled!' He was pinching the ring finger of her left glove. 'Here it is! It slipped off with your glove. You silly billy, you.'

'Silly billy?'

He 'milked' the nonexistent ring down the finger of the glove, then he reached inside and pinched the air between his thumb and forefinger and stuffed the bit of captured nothing into his watch pocket, which he patted protectively. 'And there it stays, snookums, until I have a chance to... uh... smallify it. Hubby knows best,' he said, wagging his finger at her, and he could almost feel the silent applause of the entire dining car. She, with her actress's instinct, was even more aware of the silent applause than he... and she hated it. And as for that wagging finger...!

He slipped back into their now-habitual undertone. 'Be honest and admit that I have the gift of invention necessary to be a successful playwright.'

'If all it takes are the instincts and tactics of a confidence trickster, then maybe so.'

'I've given myself three years to make it in Parisian theater.'

'It might take longer than that with lines like 'I'll be hornswaggled!' And if you don't 'make it' in three years? What then?'

'Well, in that case, I'll... I don't know. It's risky to consider failure. It puts dangerous ideas into the mind of the goddess of Fortune. What about you? How long have you given yourself to make it as an interpreter of terribly, terribly significant social dramas?'

'As long as it takes.'

'There's the girl! Now, to build up your strength for the long climb towards fame, riches, and social impact, perhaps you'd better start on those oysters.'

No longer burdened with gloves, she dug in with undisguised gusto; but now it was he who seemed suddenly to lose his appetite.

'What's wrong?' she asked, manipulating her oyster fork with address.

'These oysters make me think about my sister.'

'A pearl of a girl, is she? Or sort of slimy? Or all steamed up over your leaving her behind?'

'She adores oysters. And she hasn't eaten a thing since we received my brother's telegram telling us that he had succumbed to the wiles of... well, that he had fallen totally and eternally in love with your Sophie, and intended to marry her immediately, whether or not the family approved. Here it is, after eight, and my sister can't even go to a restaurant. I am carrying our traveling money, naturally.'

'Naturally? Why is it 'natural' for men to carry the money? But I wouldn't worry about your sister.' She finished her fourth oyster and fell upon the fifth. 'I'll bet that at this very minute she's sitting across from my brother, demolishing a platter of oysters. Dieudonne would surely—'

'Dieudonne?'

'Don't bother, I've heard them all. Dieudonne would surely have insisted that your poor abandoned sister join him for dinner. My brother always does the correct thing. He is the perfect embodiment of all things conventional— even down to conventional standards of kindness and compassion... so long as it's towards 'the right people'.'

'You sound as though you don't like your bother.'

'Oh, I love him, of course. But, no, I don't like him very much.'