Part 17 (1/2)
”All you need is a drink, boys” Deasey looked greatly ae ”That will o much easier when they pitch you both into the volcano I presuh, clinker-brick front steps Deasey turned, and all at once his face looked grave and adins?” They scraped up the rough, clinker-brick front steps Deasey turned, and all at once his face looked grave and ad you,” he said you,” he said
7
The party had originally been planned for the pint-sized mansion's ballroom, but when that room was rendered uninhabitable by the noise fro apparatus, everyone crowded into the library instead Like all the rooms in the house, the library was diave visitors a disquieting sense of giantism Sammy and Joe squeezed in behind Deasey to find the room packed to the point of immobility with Transcendental Symbolists, Purists, and Vitalists, copywriters in suits the color of new Studebakers, socialist banjo players, writers for Madeheny cannibal cults and bird-worshi+pers of the Indochinese Highlands, coans for Eas-O-Cran, the Original New England Laxative The gramophone-and (of course) the bar-had been carried up to the library as well, and over the heads of the cra trulaze of jazz and a frothy layer of conversation there was a low, heavy ru with the sarettes, the air in the rooogheny cannibal cults and bird-worshi+pers of the Indochinese Highlands, coans for Eas-O-Cran, the Original New England Laxative The gramophone-and (of course) the bar-had been carried up to the library as well, and over the heads of the cra trulaze of jazz and a frothy layer of conversation there was a low, heavy ru with the sarettes, the air in the room had a faint e” Harkoo fought his way toward the coppery hair cropped close ”I was hoping you would show”
”hello, Siggy” Deasey stiffened and offered his hand in a way that struck Joe as defensive or even protective, and then, in the next instant, thehold on hiled affection and a desire to snap bones
”Mr Clay, Mr Kavalier,” Deasey said, fighting free of the e his way out of a wet straitjacket ”May I-present-Longe hi, as if the naet hold of the connection He searched his h the cards, trying to pop the ace that he kneas in there soo of his old friend and turned s to the cousins; they each took a step back, but he just offered them his hand, with a est he subjected to his des only those who least liked to be touched At a tiance was still reserved for the genus Fat Man, Harkoo was a classic instance of the Mystic Potentate species, , stylish, and ultramundane in a vast purple-and-brown caftan, heavily e down almost to the tops of his Mexican sandals The little toe of his horny right foot, Joe saas adorned with a garnet ring A venerable Kodak Brownie hung from an Indian-beaded strap around his neck
”Sorry about all that racket racket downstairs,” he said with a hint of weariness downstairs,” he said with a hint of weariness
”Is it really hi?”
”It really is I've tried to coax him out of it I told him it was a marvelous marvelous idea in the, you know, the abstract, but in idea in the, you know, the abstract, but in practice practice But he's a terribly stubborn enius as not” But he's a terribly stubborn enius as not”
The door in the ballroo costulobular brass hel woman whom Deasey identified as Gala Dali stood loyally by her husband's side in thewith two or three other people too stubborn, too sycophantic, or perhaps sie gasoline-powered air puth of rubber hose They were all yelling at the top of their lungs ”No one at the party,” as Kahn wrote in The New Yorker, The New Yorker, was ill-et-up Most took it to be either an allusion to the tenebrous benthos of the human unconscious or else to ”The Dream of Venus,” which as everyone knows featured a school of live girls dressed up asaround half-naked in a tank In any case Dali would not, in all likelihood, have been able to hear the question through the diving helh to ask Dali what he intended by this get-up Most took it to be either an allusion to the tenebrous benthos of the human unconscious or else to ”The Dream of Venus,” which as everyone knows featured a school of live girls dressed up asaround half-naked in a tank In any case Dali would not, in all likelihood, have been able to hear the question through the diving helmet
”But never mind,” Harkoo continued cheerily, ”we're all quite cozy in here Welcome, welcome Coular reader Positively a devotee” stuff Love it Regular reader Positively a devotee”
Sammy beamed Harkoo slipped the camera from around his neck and handed it to Joe ”I'd be very honored if you would take my picture,” he said
”Please? I'm sorry?”
”Take a picture of lish?”
”He has his own brand Mr Kavalier is froood! Yes, you must! I have a marked deficit of Czech impressions”
Deasey nodded to Joe, who raised the ca, cracked-baby face Harkoo settled his jowls and eyebrows into a sober, nearly blank expression, but his eyes gleamed with pleasure Joe had never in his life made anyone so happy so easily
”How do I focus it?” Joe asked hi the camera
”Oh, don't bother about that Just look at me and push the little lever Your mind will do the rest”
”My mind” Joe snapped a photo of his host, then handed the camera back to hilish ”Telepathic”
”All caraphed now by seven thousand one hundred andeighteenpeople, all with this camera, and I assure you that no two portraits are alike” He handed the camera to Sammy, and his features, as if stamped from a machine, once more settled into the same corpulent happy mask Sammy snapped the lever ”What possible other explanation can there be for this endless variation but interference by waves erapher's own mind?”
Joe did not kno to reply to this, but he saw that a reply was expected, and as the intensity of his host's expectation increased, he realized somewhat belatedly what that reply man Harkoo looked extremely pleased He put one arm across Saood deal of shoving and apologizing, hbors, introducing them to painters and writers and various holders of cocktails, furnishi+ng each, without even appearing to stop to organize his thoughts, with a h points of their oeuvres, sex lives, or family connections
” her sister is married to a Roosevelt, don't ask on Art and Agon she's standing right under one of her ex-husband's paintingshe was publicly slapped by Siquieros” she's standing right under one of her ex-husband's paintingshe was publicly slapped by Siquieros”
Most of the nanize Ray with a series of whimsical, cacophonous, breakneck pseudo-jazz pop tunes Just the other day, when Joe stopped in at Hippodrohts and Stranger, Yesterthoughts and Stranger, over the store PA Scott was feeding a steady diet of Louis Ar what he had meant when he referred to Satchmo as the Einstein of the blues As the notes fluttered out of the fabric-covered loudspeaker, he would point at the, and even tried to snatch at one with his hands He kept turning the volume up, the better to co place ail around hiirl painter Loren MacIver, whose luallery Tall, overly thin by Joe's lights, but with a New York kind of beauty-sharp, tense, stylish-she was chatting with a tall, striking Aryan beauty as holding a tiny baby to her breast ”Miss Uta Hagen,” Harkoo explained ”She's married to Jose Ferrer, he's around here so a steady diet of Louis Ar what he had meant when he referred to Satchmo as the Einstein of the blues As the notes fluttered out of the fabric-covered loudspeaker, he would point at the, and even tried to snatch at one with his hands He kept turning the volume up, the better to co place ail around hiirl painter Loren MacIver, whose luallery Tall, overly thin by Joe's lights, but with a New York kind of beauty-sharp, tense, stylish-she was chatting with a tall, striking Aryan beauty as holding a tiny baby to her breast ”Miss Uta Hagen,” Harkoo explained ”She's married to Jose Ferrer, he's around here so Charley's Aunt” Charley's Aunt”
The women offered their hands MacIver's eyes were kohled, her lips painted a surprising shade of cocoa
”These gentlemen make comic books,” Harkoo told them ”The adventures of a fellow na muscles Vapid expression”
”The Escapist,” said Loren MacIver Her face lit up ”Oh, I like like hiether
”A man in a en laughed ”Sounds racy”
”It's quite surreal,” Harkoo said
”That's good, right?” Sa”
Theycocktails, as well as a nu For the most part these seemed to be a remarkably serious, even sober bunch of fellows They wore dark suits aistcoats and solid neckties Most of them seemed to be Americans-Peter Blume, Edwin dickinson, a shy, courtly fellow named Joseph Cornell-who shared an air of steel-rimmed, Yankee probity that surrounded like a suburb their inner Pandeht, but he was still not sure who Charley was or as being done by Uta Hagen to his aunt
At the far end of the library, a nu around a very pretty, very young wos Joe could not really understand what she was telling them, but it appeared to be a story that reflected poorly on her own judg at the same time-and it unquestionably ended with the word ”fuck” She tugged on the word, drawing it out to several tith She wound it all the way around her in two or three big loops and reveled in it as if it were a luxuriant shawl
”Fuuuuuuuck”
The , and she blushed even more deeply She had on a loose, sleeveless kind of s all the way down past her shoulders to the tops of her arms Then she looked up, and her eyesthe card at last ”Rosa Luxe Saks”
”Nah,” Sa to see her face again after so long Although Joe had never forgotten the girl who in Jerry Glovsky's bedroos of the moment, he had badly misremembered her He never would have recalled her forehead as so capacious and high, her chin as so delicately pointed In fact, her face would have seeant flying buttress of a nose Her rather sht red hyphen that curved doard just enough at one corner to allow itself to be read as a smirk of amusement, fro tableau of hu unreadable, so that did not want to be read, the determined blankness that in predator animals conceals hostile calculation, and in prey for effort to seem to have disappeared