"Shall I get you someone?" Lucy asked.
"No. Nothing doing. You go out with Herbert."
"I'll bring him here and we'll have a party, the three of us. But I'll have dinner with him first."
She put on a grey velvet princess dress with a row of orchid satin bows down one side and a gold lace Juliet cap and was in high spirits as she started off.
Will I always be alone, with only the human beings in books or those I will write about to keep me company? Vida thought forlornly as she watched from the window people rushing to celebrate the birth of 1926. Girls shouldn't live together. New Year's Eve is the worst night not to be with someone one loves. Perhaps that's why Lucy is so keyed up tonight. She's pretending. By nine o'clock impatient revelers already were tooting and making the noises of celebration and at eleven thirty she drew the curtains to muffle the festive sounds. It would be like Lucy not to come for hours, or at all, and here I'll be with all these sandwiches and the champagne swimming in melted ice in the bathtub, she thought angrily. It would have been better to have gone out with Clem. At least one wouldn't be alone.
Just before twelve Lucy and Herbert came, giggling.
He looked, Vida thought, like the mannikins in the English-style shops off Fifth in the Forties which catered to hallroom boys. Medium tall, smooth-faced as though he didn't have to shave every day, ash-blond hair and vacant blue eyes.
After the midnight toast, he had little to say in response to Vida's attempts to make conversation.
Vida ought not to ask him all those questions about books and plays and the advertising business, I never said he was a big talker like Vermillion, Lucy thought uncomfortably, going to the mantelpiece for a cigarette. Vermillion's card looked back at her, the pink lips of the face smiling, it seemed now, mockingly. That was the trouble with Vermillion, was he serious or making fun of her in sending this face that looked like her?
She took the card and, to relieve Herbert from Vida's questions, said, "Do you think this looks like me, Herbert?"
"You haven't black eyes and that face hasn't a nose," he replied, and pulled Lucy to his knee.
But she jumped up immediately, seeing Vida's expression. "Now, Herbert, you sit there and be good while Vida and I get some more sandwiches and champagne," she admonished.
