Figente was the only one she could talk to about it. He was very pleased, and lectured her for her doubts.
"Don't be melodramatic about non-essentials," he said. "Lovemaking, any way you look at it, is ridiculous. A non sequitur. It doesn't matter who is on top of you if as a result you are on top of the world—to be able to feed your palate wherever it is located, no matter where others feed their palates on you. Lyle is surely so ordinary in his demands that it is ridiculous, my child, to magnify trivial approaches. You don't seem to realize your luck."
"He doesn't appeal to me. I should think he could tell."
"Vermillion said the other night that Voltaire remarked that a man, any man, was unable to understand why any woman would want to make love with any other man than himself."
"Oh, your pet Vermillion! What does he know about it?"
"As much as the next man doubtless. In any event, you will never know what love is until you find out what it is not."
"Have you found out?"
"No—but I have obeyed the virtuous maxim that if in vice you don't succeed the first time—try try again. Or do I mean practice makes perfect? I recommend in that connection—" he smilingly paused, "you read Goncourt's Women of the 18th Century. I'll lend it to you."
"There've been so many parties I thought that tonight we'd have a quiet supper together," Lyle said after the show, when she and Mother had been living in his apartment for three weeks.
It had come at last and couldn't be put off unless she wanted to break with him completely and disappoint Mother. He had been sweet and patient and while he didn't appeal to her that way maybe he would. Anyway Figente said it was the only way to learn about love and become an artist.
Crossing the stage she glanced up into the flies and for a second wished a dangling sandbag would fall and hurt her just enough to postpone the evening. But what would happen to Mother if she were killed?
The city, sick with heat, had vomited its populace to the streets. The red gold-leafed carpet of the Hotel Parc-Athenée lobby was foot-printed and the old uniformed page swept a cigarette stub into his long-handled brass pan from the marble floor in front of the black
