"I think those long white muslin dresses women in Manet's paintings wear are more womanly than our short skirts, don't you?" Lucy had said a week ago as Vida was taking up a deep hem in her own skirt. That was Lucy, one never could keep up with her. Not a word though about the "Olympia" which had been in her mind and she was today emulating.
"Well, well, Olympia Claudel!"
"I'd like to be like her. I'll bet that Olympia knew everything."
"You're much more beautiful."
"You said it," put in Cleo, uninterested in unknowns. "There's a million dollahs worth of unborn jewels waitin' for you in this town."
"That's what you say. I guess I'm not my type. O-w-w, that damned cat scratched me. Get her out of here. Tell you what, Cleo, take her to Peggy Watson on your way to the theatre. She loves cats. We're going to Figente's."
Vida was unprepared for Figente and his magnificent house as Lucy's scattered descriptions had led her to expect a crazy sculptor who wore wigs and royal costumes in a topsy-turvy house jammed auction room fashion with odd objects like a gold dish molded from the breast of a famous statue of Venus. Thus she was taken aback when the door was opened by a stiff cadaverous man in what appeared, to her untutored eye, formal dress, whom Lucy addressed as Denis. Subdued by her first encounter with a butler she followed up the padded stairs of the golden Chinese tea papered hall through double doors where, in an enormous dark room lighted in separate areas by square moon-colored lampshades, a short round man with sparse plastered grey-blond hair and wearing a cream silk jacket greeted them.
"Figente, this is my best friend, Vida Bertrand from Congress—she's a writer."
Turtle eyes in a doughy jowled face glittered and a pudgy flaccid hand made welcome unwelcome.
"How do you do, my dear, you shall be my Boswell," a high insulting voice scraped, obviously making fun of her.
"No she won't, you'd shock her," Lucy said, and added, "Don't pay any attention to him, Vida, he's a big kidder."
Vida sat stiffly in a high-backed carved chair reflecting dourly that Figente was suffering her presence because of Lucy and that it was too evident that he and not she was the best friend.
"Cigarette?" Figente offered from a silver box.
