think about it." Retreating, he had to admit that Claudel of the Samuels Revue was a stunner, but could she sing?
Lucy laughed. "You scared him off asking for a part for me all of a sudden. I'll bet he takes forever to make up his mind. He's too important to take a chance on a beginner."
"That is too sage a remark from such youthful—and beautiful—lips," Figente admonished, playfully wiggling a beringed fat forefinger.
Then Lyle took her away to dance, saying as he held her close, "It's about time!" He was a good dancer but too tall. A perfect dancing partner should be only a little taller. Then a sunburned face with white teeth and wavy brown hair cut in. The perfect size! His compact body moved like a young tree in a slow wind as they wound among the others. She had not felt like this except when alone on the stage dark with dancing shadows, like mysterious lovers waiting to dance with her. But Lyle, frowning, took her away saying curtly, "My turn, Carly."
Carly Ransom cut in again and again.
Figente, having lost his refreshing guest, no longer was entertained by his party. Disliking Carly Ransom, heir to a new tobacco fortune, and no longer able to bear the band's unrelenting cowbells, he decided to thwart Carly and come to the aid of Lyle, his second cousin twice removed, and primarily himself. He thwacked a bronze Maillol torso with the red heel of his slipper. Delighted by the effect its echoing clangor had of stopping the dancers and band into poses of arrested movement, he shrilled in the imperious tone he affected at his costume parties as befitting the royal personages he impersonated, "We would be pleased if Aphrodite will now honor us with a dance."
Lucy was astonished to see he meant her. It was like when she slipped at the Bison Ball and had to do something because everyone was looking at her. Conscious of her body moving under the heavy beaded dress, she walked over to Chigger Cane. The room looked sort of Scheherazade so she asked Chigger to play "Hindustan" and, encouraged by a wink from Carly, she picked up the beat from her willing collaborators, Chigger and his boys, improvising what she believed was a jazzed Oriental dance. She saw Lyle, his arms folded, leaning against the mantelpiece watching her, his sensual mouth tight in a disapproving frown, and looked away defiantly, feeling her body a lizard jerking under the beaded chiffon. A silly dance, she
