Under the skin of her temples iron clamps tighten till her head will mash like an egg; she begins to walk with long strides up and down the room that bristles with itching stuffiness; spotty colors of pictures, carpets, chairs wrap about her like a choking hot blanket. Outside the window the backyards are striped with blue and lilac and topaz of a rainy twilight. She opens the window. No time to get tight like the twilight, Stan said. The telephone reached out shivering beady tentacles of sound. She slams the window down. O hell cant they give you any peace?
“Why Harry I didnt know you were back. … Oh I wonder if I can. … Oh yes I guess I can. Come along by after the theater. … Isnt that wonderful? You must tell me all about it.” She no sooner puts the receiver down than the bell clutches at her again. “Hello. … No I dont. … Oh yes maybe I do. … When did you get back?” She laughed a tinkling telephone laugh. “But Howard I’m terribly busy. … Yes I am honestly. … Have you been to the show? Well sometime come round after a performance. … I’m so anxious to hear about your trip … you know … Goodbye Howard.”
A walk’ll make me feel better. She sits at her dressingtable and shakes her hair down about her shoulders. “It’s such a hellish nuisance, I’d like to cut it all off … spreads apace. The shadow of white Death. … Oughtnt to stay up so late, those dark circles under my eyes. … And at the door, Invisible Corruption. … If I could only cry; there are people who can cry their eyes out, really cry themselves blind … Anyway the divorce’ll go through. …”
Far from the shore, far from the trembling throng
Whose sails were never to the tempest given
Gosh it’s six o’clock already. She starts walking up and down the room again. I am borne darkly fearfully afar. … The phone rings. “Hello. … Yes this is Miss Oglethorpe. … Why hello Ruth, why I haven’t seen you for ages, since Mrs. Sunderland’s. … Oh, do I’d love to see you. Come by and we’ll have a bite to eat on the way to the theater. … It’s the third floor.”
She rings off and gets a raincape out of a closet. The smell of furs and mothballs and dresses clings in her nostrils. She throws up the window again and breathes deep of the wet air full of the cold rot of autumn. She hears the burring boom of a big steamer from the river. Darkly, fearfully afar from this nonsensical life, from this fuzzy idiocy and strife; a man can take a ship for his wife, but a girl. The telephone is shiveringly beadily ringing, ringing.
The buzzer burrs at the same time. Ellen presses the button to click the latch. “Hello. … No, I’m very sorry I’m afraid you’ll have to tell me who it is. Why Larry Hopkins I thought you were in Tokyo. … They havent moved you again have they? Why of course we must see each other. … My dear it’s simply horrible but I’m all dated up for two weeks. … Look I’m sort of crazy tonight. You call up tomorrow at twelve and I’ll try to shift things around. … Why of course I’ve got to see you immediately you funny old thing.” … Ruth Prynne and Cassandra Wilkins come in shaking the water off their umbrellas. “Well goodbye Larry. … Why it’s so so sweet of both of you. … Do take your things off for a second. … Cassie wont you have dinner with us?”
“I felt I just had to see you. … It’s so wonderful about your wonderful success,” says Cassie in a shaky voice. “And my dear I felt so terribly when I heard about Mr. Emery. I cried and cried, didnt I Ruth?”
“Oh what a beautiful apartment you have,” Ruth is exclaiming at the same moment. Ellen’s ears ring sickeningly. “We all have to die sometime,” gruffly she blurts out.
Ruth’s rubberclad foot is tapping the floor; she catches Cassie’s eye and makes her stammer into silence. “Hadnt we better go along? It’s getting rather late,” she says.
“Excuse me a minute Ruth.” Ellen runs into the bathroom and slams the door. She sits on the edge of the bathtub pounding on her knees with her clenched fists. Those women’ll drive me mad. Then the tension in her snaps, she feels something draining out of her like water out of a washbasin. She quietly puts a dab of rouge on her lips.
When she goes back she says in her usual voice: “Well let’s get along. … Got a part yet Ruth?”
“I had a chance to go out to Detroit with a stock company. I turned it down. … I wont go out of New York whatever happens.”
“What wouldnt I give for a chance to get away from New York. … Honestly if I was offered a job singing in a movie in Medicine Hat I think I’d take it.”
Ellen picks up her umbrella and the three women file down the stairs and out into the street. “Taxi,” calls Ellen.
The passing car grinds to a stop. The red hawk face of the taxidriver craning into the light of the street lamp. “Go to Eugenie’s on Fortyeighth Street,” says Ellen as the others climb in. Greenish lights and darks flicker past the lightbeaded windows.
She stood with her arm in the arm of Harry Goldweiser’s dinner jacket looking out over the parapet of the roofgarden. Below them the Park lay twinkling with occasional lights, streaked with nebular blur like a fallen sky. From behind them came gusts of a tango, inklings of voices, shuffle of feet on a dancefloor. Ellen felt a stiff castiron figure in her metalgreen evening dress.
“Ah but Boirnhardt, Rachel, Duse, Mrs. Siddons. … No Elaine I’m tellin you, d’you understand? There’s no art like the stage that
