"That's right, you're not, your knees are just knobby. And you'd better wear something under that skin," said Lucy, still laughing uncontrollably.
"Fix yourself, Hal," Figente ordered primly, "and don't be silly. Remember you've been hounding me for weeks to have Simone hear you play, so don't cut up tonight."
"I won't, cross my heart. I've been longing for this chance."
Figente stood before them with the pomposity of an impresario before opening night. "I believe we are all set. We'll begin on the stroke of midnight with the Mary and Joseph tableau. Lucy, you will hold the della Robbia bambino from the white bedroom. I am hoping this scene will be beautiful enough to quiet everyone for the divertisements to follow. I set the invitations for eleven so everyone won't be plastered by twelve."
He handed a large flat Christmas package to Lucy and a small oblong one to Vida. "You'd better take these now, I may forget later."
"Christmas presents!" exclaimed Lucy. "I never can stand suspense, let's open them now."
Her package was a rare folio of 18th century ballet prints.
"They are beautiful and I love them," she said delightedly, kissing Figente soundly on the lips to his confusion.
Vida opened her package slowly. It was kind of Figente to make her a gift too because she was Lucy's friend. Within the small box lay a bracelet of golden coins alternating with large square amethysts. She looked at him in speechless wonderment.
"They are some old Greek coins I had Tiffany mount. I thought the Athene head rather like you, Boswell," he said offhandedly.
She put it on and felt like crying so she said something flip instead. "My first jewelry from a man."
"Really?" he said distantly, his eyebrows raised.
When Vida arrived at half past ten in Lucy's white beaded dress, her hair newly cropped and brilliantined in close waves, and Figente's bracelet halfway to her elbow, she wondered if her makeup and coiffure were overdone, because of his quizzical look.
His thick eyelids were gilded, his lips rouged, and his cheeks made up in the manner classed "juvenile" in the theatre. A toupee of oiled curls lay under a laurel wreath, and he wore a purple toga with
