'I stopped and had a couple.'
'With whom?' The suspicious, pinched look that always came over Laura's face when she questioned him corrupted its usual delicate, candid expression.
'Some of the boys,' he said.
'That's all?' Her voice was light and playful, in the accepted tone in which you quizzed your husband in public in her circle.
'No,' said Michael. 'I forgot to tell you. There were six Polynesian dancing girls with walnuts in their navels, but we left them at the Stork.'
'Isn't he funny?' Laura said to the bald man. 'Isn't he terribly funny?'
'This is getting domestic,' the bald man said. 'This is when I leave. When it gets domestic.' He waved his fingers at the Whitacres. 'Love you, Laura, darling,' he said, and burrowed into the crowd.
'I have a great idea,' Laura said. 'Let's not be mean to wives tonight.'
Michael drained his drink, and put the glass down. 'Who's the moustache?' he asked.
'Oh, Harry?'
'The one you were kissing.'
'Harry. I've known him for years. He's always at parties.' Laura touched her hair tenderly. 'Here. On the Coast. I don't know what he does. Maybe he's an agent. He came over and said he thought I was enchanting in my last picture.'
'Did he really say enchanting?'
'Uhuh.'
'Is that how they talk in Hollywood these days?'
'I guess so.' She was smiling at him, but her eyes flicked back and forth, looking over the room, as they always did everywhere but in their own home. 'How did you think I was in my last picture?'
'Enchanting,' Michael said. 'Let's get a drink.'
Laura stood up and took his arm and rubbed her cheek softly against his shoulder and said, 'Glad I'm here?' and Michael grinned and said, 'Enchanted.' They both chuckled as they went towards the bar, side by side, through the mass of people in the centre of the room.
The bar was in the next room, under an abstract painting of what was probably a woman with three magenta breasts, seated on a parallelogram.
Wallace Arney was there, greying and puffy, holding a teacup in his hand. He was flanked by a squat, powerful man in a blue-serge suit who looked as though he had been out in the weather for ten winters in a row. There were two girls, with flat, pretty faces and models' bony, ungirdled hips, who were drinking whisky straight.
'Did he make a pass at you?' Michael heard one of the girls saying as he came up.
'No,' the other girl said, shaking her sleek, blonde hair.
'Why not?' the first girl asked.
'At the moment,' the blonde girl said, 'he's a Yogi.'
Both girls stared reflectively at their glasses, then drained them and walked off together, stately and graceful as two panthers in the jungle.
'Did you hear that?' Michael asked Laura.
'Yes.' Laura was laughing.
Michael asked the man behind the bar for two Scotches and smiled at Arney, who was the author of Late Spring. Arney merely continued to stare directly ahead of him, saying nothing, from time to time lifting the teacup to his lips, in an elegant, shaky gesture.
'Out,' said the man in the blue-serge suit. 'Out on his feet. The referee ought to stop the bout to spare him further punishment.'
Arney looked around him, grinning and furtive, and pushed his teacup and saucer towards the man behind the bar. 'Please,' he said, 'more tea.'
The bartender filled his cup with rye and Arney peered around him once more before accepting it. 'Hello, Whitacre,' he said. 'Mrs Whitacre. You won't tell Felice, will you?'
'No, Wallace,' Michael said. 'I won't tell.'
'Thank God,' Arney said. 'She won't let me have even a beer.' His voice, hoarse and whisky-riddled, wavered in self-pity. 'Not even a beer. Can you imagine that? That's why I carry a teacup. From a distance of three feet, who can tell the difference? After all,' he said defiantly, sipping from the cup, 'I'm a grown man. She wants me to write another play.' Now he was aggrieved. 'Just because she's the wife of my producer she feels she has a right to throw a glass right out of my hand. Humiliating. A man my age should not be humiliated like that.' He turned vaguely to the man in the blue-serge suit. 'Mr Parrish here drinks like a fish and nobody humiliates him. Everybody says, isn't it touching how Felice devotes herself to that drunken Wallace Arney? It doesn't touch me. Mr Parrish and I know why she does it. Don't we, Mr Parrish?'
'Sure, Pal,' said the man in the blue suit.
'Economics. Like everything else.' Arney waved his cup suddenly, splashing whisky on Michael's sleeve. 'Mr Parrish is a Communist and he knows. The basis of all human action. Greed. Naked greed. If they didn't think they could get another play out of me, they wouldn't care if I lived in a distillery.' Looking at Laura he said: 'Your wife is very pretty. Very pretty indeed. I've heard her spoken of here tonight in glowing terms.' He leered at Michael knowingly. 'Glowing terms. She has several old friends among the assembled guests here tonight. Haven't you, Mrs Whitacre?'
'Yes,' said Laura.
'Everybody has several old friends among the assembled guests,' Arney said. 'That's the way parties are these days. Modern society. A nest of snakes, hibernating for the winter, everybody wrapped around everybody else. Maybe that'll be the theme of my next play. Except I won't write it.' He drank deeply. 'Marvellous tea. Don't tell Felice.' Michael took Laura's arm and started to leave. 'Don't go, Whitacre,' Arney said. 'I know I'm boring you, but don't go. I want to talk to you. What do you want to talk about? Want to talk about Art?'
'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.
