Among the Daughters/Chapter 36

by Angna Enters

Chapter 36

THIS PAINFUL HOUR

In Congress the last Sunday in October 1925 Vida Bertrand cleaned house while her father slept off his Saturday night drunk. Grit from Friday's dust storm had sifted over everything in the house, unchanged since her mother's death in May. She swept and polished vigorously as though to make it last because by this time next Sunday she would be back in New York.

Later in the afternoon she sat having coffee and cake with Mae in Aunt Mabel's kitchen.

"When you counted your money every payday it reminded me of Pussy and myself before we went to New York," Mae said, her eyes crinkling.

"I thought I would never be able to save enough because there were always unexpected expenses for the house. The screen door tore, then there was a plumber. Pa hasn't forgiven me for using that $283 Ma saved without his knowing it. He says it was my duty to pay the doctor and funeral bills. I couldn't, I didn't have it. He's convinced I have money in New York. People don't believe one can be poor in New York too. I'll have to look for a job when I get back. I can't wait to show Lucy the swell dress and coat you made for me."

Mae rocked back and forth comfortably. "I think it turned out well too, and you're so thin now you look like a fashion plate. You worked too hard this summer, clerking and keeping house. The Bittner shop is doing well, isn't it? Miss Bertha told me they are better off than when they made to order and I sewed for them. Congress is certainly growing fast."

They had had this same kind of conversation many times in the past five months Vida thought as she replied, "Yes, the new packinghouse and factories are bringing in more and more people. I want Pa to rest or sell the house and live with the cousins. They need money, and he would be taken care of. He won't talk about it. In fact, now that I'm leaving he doesn't talk to me at all."

"Men have to have their own way," Mae commented, yawning from the soothing motion of her rocker.

"I can't wait to see Lucy. She hasn't written me in weeks. She never writes much of anything anyway. Her cards are mostly questions about what you and I are doing."

"My letters are like that too. But I'm glad she says she is having a good time. She thinks she will be going into a show soon. She said in yesterday's letter that she has an agent now to do all that work. She liked the hotel she is staying at too. It isn't as much • trouble as keeping house since she fired Cleo. The Jason Hotel. I don't remember it, do you?"

"No. But I never paid much attention to hotels."

"Lucy always liked hotels best. When your mother died so suddenly and you came out I thought first maybe you would take care of Mabel and I would go East. Then I realized your father needed you and so I thought I'd get a nurse. But Lucy said not to come, that she might be going on the road any time. I think maybe she's enjoying herself not having to have me around. I like it when she goes out and has a good time. I don't like her to think she must stay home because of me. So—I've stayed on because Mabel won't be better for a long time. But I feel better about being away now that you're going back." She cocked her head. "I hear Mabel awake. I must go and help her because she isn't used to crutches yet." She put her arms around Vida. "I'll miss you, but I'm glad you're going to see Lucy. You will write and tell me everything? If she needs me?"

"I'll write as soon as I see her. Now I must go and say goodbye to Mrs. Brush."

It was a kind of deliverance to be in the rattling coach, isolated among strangers, where one could at last gather oneself together for the first time in months. The train sped past tattered com skeletons leaning anguished against the wind. Odd that though Clem talked about how optimistic every aspect of life in Congress was his paintings invariably recorded only the dry melancholy of this passing landscape. Even the new oil of hepaticas, elaborately framed, which now hung in the center of Mrs. Brush's parlor, was hard and static. Mrs. Brush had said wistfully, "Of course, as Clem says, this painting is more important, but I always loved the first one." It had been best not to mention that the first "Hepaticas" had come back in a strange fashion to Lucy, who had been a collaborator in its inception. She must tell Clem he was the boast of Congress and that at Cheever's his name was on the lips of painters springing up like mushrooms; that Henkel and Larson were aping his work with plagiaristic precision; that the Widow Doremus was painting too to prove that women could be artists and had converted the walls of her knickknack shop into an art gallery.

The trip on the cheapest train seemed endless and as it plunged into the Pennsylvania Station tunnel she was shaking with tension. There had been no invitation from Lucy to stay with her so she went to a nearby YWCA. The dreary cubicle seemed more a cell in a reformatory for wayward girls than a home for the homeless.

She telephoned but Lucy was not in, not surprising as it was the middle of the afternoon. She put on the clothes Mae had made for her and, as she walked to the Jason to leave a note, it suddenly struck her as odd that Lucy should be at a shabby hotel off Broadway. She left the note with a sharpfaced desk clerk and, with foreboding, telephoned Figente to inquire about her.

"He would like you to come right down," relayed Denis.

She was horrified to see Figente so shrunken, his yellow jowls swung as he came to greet her with an attempt at his former polite insolence. "And how were the provinces?" he asked, his clammy hand sliding through hers.

"I won't bore you with details," she said, trying to sound offhand. She could not relate to one so dreadfully sick the horrors of her first encounter with death in the shaded parlor at home. Home that never seemed home. Or tell of nightmares when Ma's eyes so like Tina's accused from the grave a selfish undutiful daughter.

"Being thin becomes you," he said. "Where are you staying?"

He seemed over-glad to have company. It wasn't like Figente to pay compliments. At least, not to her. "I'm at the YWCA tonight but I'll look for a place tomorrow. I haven't even seen Lucy yet. I left word at the Jason."

"The Jason? Where's that?"

"You mean you haven't seen her recently?"

"Not for months, but then I'm just back from Newport for a week before moving on to Palm Beach. I haven't been quite up to scratch and Alice says Palm Beach may amuse me. But, what is more important, it is warm. I gather I'm not the only one who hasn't heard from her. I've had several plaintive letters from Nino. Rather shabby of her, isn't it, not to write him?"

"She could never do a shabby thing. Sometimes her reasons may seem odd to others but then they aren't Lucy. Frankly, I'm worried about her. I'll try and reach her now."

"Tell her to come down if you do," he called after her.

She had been in and gone out, leaving no return message to Vida's note.

"I wouldn't worry, she is undoubtedly in the arms of a new Adonis. Someone obviously she doesn't want us to know about."

"That's not nice, and I don't believe it. After all, there is no reason for her to sit and wait for me to call. She couldn't reach me at the 'Y'!"

"But she might at least have come to see me once before I went to Newport. She hasn't been down since that day you both were here last May."

"Perhaps she decided you were not her friend because of your siding with Horta."

"I thought she was being childishly melodramatic," he said pettishly.

"I don't agree. It was a vicious thing Horta did. Lucy knew that from then on, in one way or another, word would spread that she was a call-girl."

"Oh well, what of it? Nino didn't care, and asked her to marry him, didn't he? I was vastly entertained by the news about Horta. Of course, women have no sense of humor. To illustrate. I thought it would be amusing to play a little joke on Horta. Let's see if you appreciate it." He leaned forward and licked his small dry lips. "I asked Mary Doyle, who as you know is gossip personified, my sister Alice, who though the soul of propriety is not dull-witted, and Horta to tea. I told them I was planning an enormous party in Horta's honor. She, as you can imagine, was quite overcome. Especially in addition to meeting Alice, as she had been dying to wangle an invitation from her to Newport. I told them I planned to transform this room into the reception parlor of a Wild West Maison Close and that I depended on Horta to give it the authentic touch, to help with the decorations, and principally to resume, for this one evening, her former role as Madam. I really got quite carried away with the possibilities of the idea." He wiped his eyes, shaking with laughter.

"What happened?" Vida asked, slowly gathering the threads of implication.

His expression became one of puzzled ingenuousness. "It was so disappointing. I had to give up the idea for the party because Horta sailed for Europe shortly thereafter."

She looked into his lashless unblinking frog eyes, and could not help laughing. "What a pity!" she said, the full impact of his revenge for Lucy precipitating in her a wave of affection for this contrary being.

"Dinner is served," said Denis.

"I must go and find Lucy," Vida said, rising.

Figente seemed genuinely disappointed. "You can't leave when Denis has made your favorite dishes," he wailed. "Try again and see if she's come in."

"She hasn't," Vida reported frowning. He must be very lonesome tonight that he was going out of his way to be so nice to her.

"How's Hal?" she asked simulating cheerfulness.

"Hal's in Paris. Don't you think this white burgundy is quite good?"

"It's nectar to me. In Congress the only wine you can get is the red ink an Italian grocer makes, and that's worse than vinegar. When did he leave?"

"About the time I left for Newport," Figente said. "I knew he would leave in time, he wanted so much to be in the vortex of modern music—but I hoped I would be well enough to go with him as far as Rome. I want to see the Vatican again. Did I ever tell you I have a Cardinal cousin?" He spoke wistfully.

In the candlelight his face made her think of a woman Lucy had told about, an old woman who had had the new paraffin treatment in face lifting and when her face got hot the wax had melted.

"But he'll come back, and think how much he will have learned," she tried to comfort him.

"Of course," he said airily, closing her off from view of his resignation to loneliness. "But meanwhile there is that apartment of Hal's off Madison that I took for him to have a place to practice by himself. Unless you prefer some other place, I wish you would take it. There are two rooms, kitchen and bath, and there are good furnishings from here. Take it as a favor to me—I cannot bear to pay a year's rent to that manipulator Ned Corrigan without some wear and tear on his goddammed apartment.

"You know perfectly well it will be a godsend to me," she said.

He squirmed at the fervor of her acceptance. "Actually I have as usual an ulterior motive. The library is exactly as you left it when you were called to Congress and will require your attention for at least the winter. Your previous cataloging was too incomplete. I want the cards to contain more detailed information, dates, description of binding. And when I return from Palm Beach I want to dictate my autobiography. The house will be closed but Denis will have his apartment above the stable. I still call it that, though I suppose I should say library. He will keep his eyes on things and get anything you need."

She looked down at her souffle so that he would not see her distress at being caught again in the lonely library, despite all its fascinating works, but even if she had had another job in prospect she could not refuse him and his kindness. "Lucy says you're a softy," she said, "and I think she's right."

"Not at all. It's that I cannot bear to have my things mauled by strangers," he said with sudden coldness, rising. "If you don't mind, it's past my bedtime. Oh, and if you do actually see Lucy tell her I am most annoyed with her."

The scurrying of "Y" inmates up and down the squeaky hall boards awakened Vida at seven, too early to phone Lucy. She dressed and by eight thirty was in Hal's apartment on the third floor of a remodeled brownstone block of which the street and first floor were shops.

She recognized the white Moroccan rug with the brown zigzag pattern, the olive velvet studio couch and two brown upholstered chairs from Figente's, but not the long painted Venetian table against the sage walls, or the lamps and smaller tables and chairs. The long table would make a desk, she thought, looking approvingly at the black marble mantelpiece which was a real fireplace, and saw in the reflection of its ceiling-high mirror the Chinese red walls of the bedroom. That room had been all new. Striped zebras roamed about the black drapes, bedcover and upholstery, and obviously were Hal's art moderne taste. The sun pouring in made the bedroom seem less sybaritic.

"A well-kept apartment for a well-kept boy," she said to herself out loud because it seemed strange to move into Hal's apartment.

At nine thirty she phoned Lucy.

"Miss Claudel doesn't want to be disturbed until one," the switchboard girl said.

I'm not going to sit around on a beautiful day and wait until she gets ready to answer the phone, Vida thought huffily, and went out to take in the beauties of Fifth Avenue scintillating with mid-morning activity.

"I feel as though I'm dreaming, being back and with such a luxurious apartment," she telephoned Figente to thank him, not mentioning the burns and scratches on some of his best pieces.

"I'm delighted it's all right. Have you spoken to Lucy?"

"Not yet. I have to phone now."

"She's gone out and won't be back until evening. No, she left no message," reported the operator.

If Lucy doesn't want to see me, I'm not going to keep calling, Vida resolved, piqued at what now seemed deliberate evasion.

"Come on over at four," Clem said in hearty greeting, and she never had felt so glad to hear his voice.

"I'm sorry I didn't ask you to come earlier," he said when she arrived on the dot. "Ilona was here but she had to leave to speak about her theory of movement at an anthropological society."

He pulled out a canvas on which a stark conventionalized Ilona, clad in a flat triangle of purple, wielded in jointed angles a hatchet.

"It's her latest work, 'Prodinus,' " he explained. "It expresses the synthesis of the pioneer spirit inherent in great leaders. The hatchet symbolizes hewing to the core. I think I caught it," he ended in a bravura of uncertainty.

It reminded Vida of old prints of Carrie Nation, the wrecker of saloons, but she did not feel like arguing the point.

"It's just like Ilona. Would you believe it, I haven't seen Lucy yet. We keep missing each other," she said, hoping he would tell her something without her having to ask.

His mouth grew sullen. "She never comes here. I haven't seen her since the party after the recital. Sуmy says he's seen her a couple of times at Piselli's and other supper clubs."

He finished abruptly as if ridding himself of her image and Vida was reluctant to disclose that she too did not know what Lucy was doing. "I must tell you how proud Congress is of you," she said.

"What you tell me," he said after listening, "makes me even more sure I want to get back to the grass roots and away from this bunch of foreigners who kowtow to French painting. That's all the important collectors buy."

"But since you don't have to sell what difference does that make? I think New York is stimulating, its vibrations shake up my brain cells. I love being one of the 'teeming millions,' I don't think I'll ever return to Congress."

Clem shook his head rebukingly. "Figente, Vermillion, and that bunch have been a bad influence on you. I wish I had known you were coming earlier because I've a date at six, but you must wait and see Semy. He'll be home any minute. Anyway, I hope to see you a lot, and when you see Lucy tell her hello for me."

The moment he left she tried the Jason again but this time did not leave her name when Lucy did not answer.

Semy came, sleek, his face fuller and imbued with the cordiality of success. "So you're back. Boy, what a day! I've been on the phone talking to Mr. Biggens in Hollywood off and on all day. I'll fix us a drink."

The shy reverence with which he mentioned Biggens seemed to Vida to have the quality of a young girl speaking of a beau, though there was nothing effeminate about Semy.

"Taste this and see if it's dry enough." He smacked his flat lips and handed her the drink with the pomposity of a new connoisseur. "It's fine, and you certainly look up and coming."

"How about Piselli's for dinner?" he preened.

"I want to reach Lucy first if I can. I haven't been able to reach her all day. Have you seen her?" she asked, too worried to cover up her anxiety.

"I saw her at Piselli's about a week ago but I didn't speak to her. I was having dinner with a fellow whose book we may buy," he said importantly, refilling the glasses. "Her agent, Bob Noonan, came in the other day and asked if I'd speak to Biggens about her for a picture."

"But Lucy has never wanted to be in the movies," Vida protested, resenting the inference that Lucy was appealing to Semy for a job.

"Everybody wants to be in the movies," he said coldly, "but I doubt whether Lucy has it in her to make the grade."

She wanted to strike him. "What do you mean?" she demanded.

He finished his drink and took his time answering, a trick he had learned from Biggens which put a questioner at a disadvantage. "Why nothing," he said mock-innocently, "it's that everyone knows she's been slipping. She hasn't been able to get a job."

"That's not true," Vida cried, sick with apprehension. "She got a wonderful offer of a world tour from Judock—it's that she can't decide what field to choose, concert or Broadway. And if she wanted to, she could marry Nino—the Marqués de Mendez y Avila—and forget all about dancing, or movies for that matter." That will hold him, she thought vengefully.

He laughed disarmingly. "You misunderstood me. It's not that I believe it, it's what people are saying. Obviously they don't know the facts. I'm very glad you told me. Now I can answer any cracks. Let's call her and ask her to join us."

What a hateful man, she thought. "I'll try again," she said, with the feared result. She could not bear the prospect of sitting with him through the evening and begged off, but was not satisfied to leave without a few darts in repayment of his slight to Lucy.

"I take it you've given up the idea of writing?"

He returned a dig at her. "Oh, everyone is writing these days."

Ready to leave, she thought of something she had meant to ask Clem. "By the way, did you know Nino gave Lucy Clem's 'Hepaticas'? I meant to tell him but forgot. But maybe he knows?"

Semy's eyes clouded and his voice was gentle with concern. "I wouldn't tell Clem if I were you. It might make him feel bad to learn that Horta sold the painting after he gave it to her."

"He gave his mother's 'Hepaticas' to Horta Cornwallis?"

"Why not? That was good business, as she influenced, among others, Sophie Biggens—I helped with Sophie too—to buy one of his paintings. He made his mother another one. But I wouldn't like him to know what happened," he said looking at her concernedly, "because he's so sensitive and he really didn't want to give up that painting."

He had hoped she would think it a joke on Clem, as he did, but her skeptical look made him redden guiltily. Semy, she guessed, had talked Clem into giving up the painting. Unable to conceal her distaste, she left abruptly.

At home, she telephoned without hope of reaching Lucy but to her surprise Lucy answered.

"Oh hello," came the laconic voice, as though no time had passed since they last had been together.

"Didn't you get my messages?" Vida demanded, angry at the lack of welcome in Lucy's voice.

"I guess they're in a pile of mail I haven't read yet."

"What are you doing tonight?" Vida asked, hoping for an invitation.

Lucy hesitated, then said she was busy; but halfheartedly, Vida thought, invited her for breakfast about noon the next day.

The next morning, in the dress and coat Mae had made, Vida walked to the hotel. In the grisly lobby with its chipped acanthus leaves she felt panicky at what might be her first glimpse of Lucy in such shabby surroundings.

"Come in," Lucy called in response to her knock, and she opened the door into the darkened room. Lucy was still in bed.

"Oh, it's you! I thought it was the waiter with my breakfast. Switch on the light."

There was no warmth in her greeting.

"Are you all right?" Vida asked, trying to ignore the appearance of the room. From the drawers of an open wardrobe trunk hung underwear and stockings. A pile of books teetered next to an ashtray full of lipsticked cigarette stubs on the night table.

Lucy stretched and yawned. "I'm just fine," she said, and got up to put on the marabou negligee Mae had given her last Christmas. "I never put up the shades because the men in the offices across the street are always looking for a free show. Wait until I phone my agent about an appointment and take a quick shower. Then we'll have a chance to talk."

She was frail, Vida saw, and her baby-fine hair bleached pale hung almost to her shoulders. Her skin was luminous, and a shiver went down Vida's spine as she remembered Lucy saying men often had said they felt like breaking her bones. She came from the shower partially dressed under the robe and, pinning a towel around her head, went slowly through her involved ritual of makeup.

"I think girls lose their looks after sixteen and have to use a lot of makeup to keep the attention of men, don't you?" she said.

The waiter brought her fruit juice, coffee and toast, and she told him to bring another order. His eyes were hot when he turned from looking at her.

"You're the limit!" Vida said.

Lucy shrugged. "I didn't do a thing. He has a wife and five children. A cute Frenchman took turns with him and used to teach me some French but then he and this Greek had a fight. I always keep near the phone in case he gets out of hand."

"Sometimes you give me the creeps."

She glanced unhappily at Vida and began gathering together the clothes she would wear. "Darn it, I can't find my garters," she said and, taking a length of elastic from a department store bag, measured, cut, and sewed it with a few stitches. "You certainly look wonderful," she said, biting the thread.

"Mae made this outfit." Vida took off her coat and showed the fawn wool dress.

"Mother is wonderful, isn't she? I always wanted her to go into dress designing but she didn't want to."

"I told her I'd write the minute I saw you. She's worried about you. She says she can't make out from your letters whether you want her to come."

"Oh no," Lucy said evasively, "this climate doesn't agree with her. And then too," she added nervously, "show business is uncertain these days. I never thought I needed an agent. Now I've a good one, Bob Noonan. Of course he's a bother sometimes. So I sit on his lap and go to dinner with him and kid him along and so far everything is all right because he thinks he's going to make money on me."

Her laugh was cheerless as she took the tray from the waiter and set it on the bed.

"I guess I could clear away those books and that ashtray and put your tray there."

"Don't bother."

"I've been doing a lot of reading," she said abruptly, "but I don't care much about the latest novels. Men have a funny way of writing about women. I could tell them a thing or two. And about themselves. I've been thinking maybe I'd try and write. I suppose you did a lot this summer?"

"No," Vida said defensively, stricken by the hiatus of the past unproductive months. "I had to work and keep house so I was too tired. But now that I'm settled I expect to start."

And I must remember, she thought, to make a note of how it is easier for acquaintanceship than friendship to pick up at the same point after an absence. Our severance period has erected a block in the old easy interflow stream of our close relationship. This painful hour of reunion is in the nature of the aftermath of a major operation, like the dividing of Siamese twins. Somewhere along the line, Lucy has gone off into an unfamiliar realm.

"This coffee is cold, and this room a sight. I'll get dressed and we'll go out to lunch somewhere," Lucy said.

"I haven't told you," Vida began, and told about Figente and Horta, working on the library, and Hal's apartment. "Figente doesn't understand why you haven't been to see him. He looks dreadful."

"I did phone one day when I felt I had to talk to someone but there was no answer. He must have been away then. Now I don't feel like seeing him, or anyone of his crowd. That's why I moved. I thought a change would do me good. I didn't want to hear any more about art. I think artists are very one-sided, don't you? But I do feel sorry for Figente about Hal. Those boys are very fickle. I suppose he meant well about showing up Horta but it came a little late."

"How could he know what she was, and was up to, until we told him?" Vida came to his defense.

"I know," Lucy said restlessly, "but the damage had been done. I was looking in a Fifth Avenue window and a man came and stood next to me and said 'Hello!' He was a total stranger. Then he said, 'We have mutual friends, Fred Lapham tells me.' I remembered meeting Lapham for the first time at Horta's party, so I said, 'You are mistaken' and he said, 'Oh come now.' I had to say I'd call a cop before he'd go away."

She took a new pair of slippers from a box and tied their straps above the ankle with black ribbons.

"Very sporty!" Vida said about the stilt-heeled slippers with round black toes and tan heels.

"Yes, I found a new French shoeshop. Not expensive. I like to wear a pair two weeks and then throw them away. There's another reason I moved from Park Avenue. Men I didn't know began calling me up at all hours, using Lorna's name. Then there was another man I used to have dinner with sometimes I wanted to shake. He was a broker and one time we played bridge with another couple and I won about $2,000. He said I ought to give it to him to invest on margin so I did. He made me quite a lot of money, but I didn't see why he should think he owned me. I said he could have his money back, but he wouldn't take it. Anyway $7,000 was nothing to him. He's a millionaire."

At least, Vida thought, relieved, she isn't broke.

Lucy parted her hair in the center, brushing and rolling the ends under at the level of her ear lobes. "This is called a page boy bob. I got tired of curls. My hair is naturally straight."

"I always thought it had a wave."

"Straight as a stick."

"I like it that way."

"You know I've always been crazy about ragtime and jazz, so I've decided to go in for that. I'm better at it than all that acrobatic ballet you have to do now, though I am working on one jazz number on toes. Bob Noonan is working on some night club dates. So you see, after you left all sorts of things happened."

She said it almost accusingly, Vida thought, as though Ma died to spite her. "What else?"

"Lyle came around after his honeymoon with Clarissa and wanted to know if I'd marry him if he got a divorce or if I'd take him back right away. I never have anything to do with a married man, and I didn't want him even if he were free, so I told him nothing doing. I felt guilty though because you know how disappointed Mother would be. He's her ideal son-in-law."

"But how about Nino, you liked him? You'd almost decided to marry him. Figente's had letters from him asking why he doesn't hear from you."

Lucy took Clem's "Hepaticas" from a drawer and put the painting on the dresser. "Sometimes I take this out and look at it and try to make up my mind. I think of how much I like Nino and how I felt when he left. Then I think of what Figente said about joining the Church and how it would be for forever and it scares me because I want to be sure and I wouldn't want to hurt Nino."

"You shouldn't let Figente influence you. After all, Nino might not care whether you join the Church or not. Figente has become very religious since his last illness."

"I've been sick too," Lucy said dolefully. "I've been going to a doctor. My blood pressure is low and I'm anemic so he gives me liver and iron injections. He's very good-looking."

At that they both laughed and regained something of their old closeness.

They both were not yet twenty, Vida thought, but Lucy had aged the more during the past months, though occasionally, as now, there was a flash of her former buoyancy. What was most symptomatic of her change was the carelessness of her dress, as though she had lost interest in clothes and everything. She had slipped on a sleeveless black crepe de Chine dress, tying a ribbon around her waist as a belt in a manner that made her little stomach stick out. The yoke of her dress, from her throat to below her breasts, was a latticed pattern, so that at times the tip of a breast could be glimpsed, and a bit of underwear. It was as if she didn't care, or didn't know.

"Fix your dress, it's down too far," Vida ordered.

"Oh, is it?" Lucy said indifferently and pulled it up. She put on a grey felt cloche with a silver band, and a moleskin coat with a grey fox collar. "Let's go, I know a place that has good bread, nice and soft. I hate those hard rolls you get in swell restaurants."

Vida was astonished to be taken to a lunchroom buzzing With flies under the 3rd Avenue Elevated, with sawdust on the floor, and a bill of fare of thirty-five- and forty-cent dishes.

"I'll have liver and bacon, milk and raisin cake, it's good for you," Lucy said, oblivious to the stares of men in work clothes at other tables.

"So will I," Vida said, though she was not hungry.

"I love to lie in bed these days and eat raisins and dates and figs while I'm reading," Lucy chatted. "They are full of iron. One fig is twenty-five calories."

"Have you heard anything about Paul Vermillion?" Vida asked, at last forcing out the question which had been preoccupying her.

"I had a card from him in Paris. So did you. I forgot to forward it.

"Where is it, and what did he say? He must think me a fine one for not answering," Vida exclaimed, her spirits soaring.

"Oh no, he didn't expect an answer. It wasn't anything special. Just a line some girl, Joyce, said at dinner he thought you'd like to hear about. I couldn't make out what it meant."

"It must have been James Joyce, the great writer, and I do think you might have sent it to me. I hope you find it."

"It's probably around somewhere, in my trunk—I'll look for it."

Reversing her guarded manner, Lucy leaned forward impulsively. "Now that you're back I feel like working again. I'm going to work hard at my stage dancing and get my name back in lights. That's what impresses people most, even those who pretend to look down on Broadway. I haven't done anything about it yet because I want to be ready with some good numbers. Of course, I'd still like to do something creative. Vermillion said all you can do is what you can do and maybe art results, so maybe there's hope for me. But I don't want to give concerts, it's too long between shows. I want to dance twice a day every day, like at the Palace, to fill in time."

She finished her milk and sat brooding.

"What about Ranna?"

"I finally told him I didn't love him and that I knew I wouldn't be happy working with him even though I admired his work. He went to Boston. He's opening a school with Mrs. Custerd's help."

They looked at each other and laughed.

"Boston always was famous for importing spices from the Orient," Vida said.

"Well," Lucy said, "maybe those girls up there won't care if he doesn't feel like working. He sure is an artist at that. Which reminds me. You should see Demora—remember, she's the one with the long black hair Ranna was fascinated with. She's given up show business. She has a rich old boy friend who bought her a house in the Seventies between Madison and Park. She clinks with diamonds and is very rough-feened."

They used their lipsticks and lighted Lucy's gold-tipped perfumed cigarettes.

Lucy pushed aside her cake and leaned on the table. "If I want to be rich I'll have to earn it myself. Figente is right, I'm no good at getting things from men."

Getting things from men had been something Lucy always had resisted. The fact that she even thought of it was evidence of a kind of abscess poisoning Lucy's spirit, eating away at it into this state of melancholy indecision. It could not be the Horta party alone, something more wounding must have happened. But what? wondered Vida depressed.

"I must tell you something else," Lucy said as they pulled on their coats. "Remember Lois who was always disappearing during rehearsals? Well, she went to Rambouillet this summer to study with Pergov. I ran into her about two weeks ago. She said she nearly died. You know how lazy she is. Well, he made her walk to the market every day, three miles each way, besides carrying two heavy baskets, and if she didn't keep up to his time schedule she had to sleep on the ground without a mosquito net all night. She said the worst of it was she could never see him alone, so she went to Paris and had a big two weeks with a man she met on the boat going over and came home dead broke. But then, you know, Lois was always flighty. She wouldn't know how to be serious about learning discipline."

"Me neither, that way," Vida asserted.

"You may think it's funny but I think it was Lois's fault that she didn't get anything out of Pergov. Ilona learned a lot from that demonstration. I saw one of her boys, Teddy, in my agent's office one day—he wants a job in a musical—and he told me she has a whole new system of exercises to discover power beyond power in disciplining your body."

They stood on the sidewalk and Vida saw Lucy shivering, her skin drawn, purple rings under her eyes, as though many years had passed since they entered the lunchroom. Up to now Lucy's changes of mind had seemed inconsequential whims and always there had been the conviction that she would come out on top, even after the Horta party. For the first time she pitied Lucy.

"I do wish you'd come and share the apartment. I feel cut in halt when we aren't together," she said.

"So do I. I'll think about it and let you know. I have to go across town now and meet Noonan but I'll phone you soon," Lucy said. Vida watched her teeter away on the ridiculous high heels with small insecure steps, her head high as always.

The moment the hurdle of facing Vida at the Jason had passed, Lucy had known how relieved she was that Vida had persisted in telephoning. In Vida's clever eyes she had read dismay at sight of the room and she had had to talk all around the real reason why she was there. Not only because of Horta but that, after Vermillion had gone, and Vida too, and when everything she had worked for had seemed to be slipping away, going to the Jason was like going back to the beginning in New York to try and find the right road again.

Walking crosstown she confided to Vermillion, who sometimes when she was most lonely seemed to return from across the sea to listen, "I jabbered and jabbered about everything because it was so good to have her to talk to but I didn't talk about you. It's the funniest thing but it is hard for me to mention your name to her or anyone. Vida said once she believes people can die for love but I still think it's the other way around. You can die for not being in love because what else is there? But let me tell you something, I'm going to try hard to snap out of this. I'm not going to keep thinking about you and I'm sick of running around with different men. I want to make a relationship last. I'm going to see if I can't love someone who'll let me, because I enjoy taking care of someone I like. Of course, you're too independent to care about anything like that," she ended out loud severely and looked up to see a strange man look at her warily.

"Don't pay any attention to me. I just had a fight with a friend," she told the stranger and laughed, feeling better than she had in weeks.