The Rich Girl

Logan Hesitated at the door, which was open, wondering whether his corduroy jacket and unpressed flannel slacks were suitable for the occasion. The only thing he knew about the party inside was that the host, an adman named Ted Denning, threw these weekly blasts on a kind of Noah's-ark principle: The guest list hopefully included one of everything, from karate instructors to college professors, fashion models to foreign agents. From the glimpse Logan got of the evening's mélange, it was certainly recruited from the more well-shod layers of city life, and while this suited his intentions, it also added to his nervousness. The parties Logan usually attended were held in lofts or basements, and he had almost forgotten that in other circles the mere wearing of a coat and tie (any coat and tie) was not by itself considered the height of fashion. He stood wavering between plunging into the mob or back into the street when Denning spotted him and hurried to the door. Within proper range the host fired out his hand, and his smile increased to cover what Logan suspected was a lack of recognition.

"Hi! Ted Denning here."

"My name's Logan. I met you in Washington Square last Sunday with Paula—"

"You're the poet!"

Denning's grasp curled more certainly around Logan's hand and his face showed the joy of the true collector. He ushered the new guest in, equipped him with a drink, and thrust him toward a buxom lady who identified herself as a toy buyer for a chain of department stores. On learning that Logan wrote poems that were actually published in literary magazines, she showed the most sympathetic interest.

"My God," she said, "I only wish I had the time."

Nodding and grinning, Logan retreated, and began to float around the room. It was decorated in a style that might be called Renaissance collegiate: tennis trophies and African sculpture, a saber above the mantel, a coffee table made from a wagon wheel. The whole place bloomed with cushions of every size, color and shape, which seemed a waste of comfort since almost everyone was standing. Logan carefully made his way around the little groups, not wanting to get stuck on any of the shoals of conversation that lurked around him. He wanted only to reconnoiter, and be free to strike if a promising target presented herself. When he did catch a glimpse—and a glimpse was enough—of the very thing he was looking for, he refueled his drink before making an approach.

What had struck him at once were her legs, which were elegant. Although she was partially hidden by a hovering broad-backed man with wavy golden hair, Logan saw enough of her to know that what first caught his attention was well matched by the rest of the picture. It was just the sort of thing that a young man weary of girls with dirty hair and baggy sweat shirts sees in his dreams. Pacing and sipping, he patiently patrolled the outer perimeter of her conversation until the goldilocked fellow was forced to withdraw for his own refueling. Lighting a fresh cigarette, Logan moved in.

"Hello. My name's Jim Logan."

"Ah'm Laurie," the girl said.

"You're also lovely."

"Wha, thank you."

"And Southern?"

"Oh, Lawdie."

"No?"

"Yes, but Ah'm tryin to lose mah accent."

"What for? It's lovely, too."

"Well, it's all right fuh Tennessee Williams, but after that it's rather limitin."

"You're an actress?"

"Not yet."

"Studying?"

"Oh mah, yes—"

She held up her left hand and ticked off her studies with her fingers.

"Elocution, dance, drama, design and voice."

"You sing, too?"

"No. That's wha Ah'm takin voice."

"Very shrewd."

"Oh, no, Ah'm not that at all."

She sighed prettily, making Logan feel manfully protective.

He took a long sip of his drink and said, "Well, it's only right. I mean, it wouldn't be fair to be both shrewd and beautiful."

"Oh Mistuh Logan, you're rilly too nice. Are you in the theatuh?"

"No, not really. I just scribble."

"You write? How (continued on page 94)Rich Girl(continued from page 84) fascinatin! For the stage?"

"Well, I've considered it."

This was technically true. Logan had entertained the idea of writing a play about beautiful women in order to get to meet some.

"Whatevah do you write, then?"

"Just poems."

"A poet! That's duh-vine. Ah don't think Ah evah met one before, in real life."

"Well, we're around."

"And a young one, too—Ah mean, you're not very old, are you?"

"Well, old enough," Logan said, and felt the tips of his ears going red. He knew he didn't look his 26, and although the postcollegiate aura was often an advantage with older women, he feared that with this younger girl it might be a handicap.

"Ah didn't mean—" she said, no doubt noticing his ears, "Ah meant young for a poet."

"Well, maybe—"

"But Lawdie, isn't this fascinatin? What kind do you write?"

"What kind of poems? Well, different kinds."

She looked at him slyly.

"Ah hope they're not the howlin kind."

"Oh no, not at all. Very quiet, in fact."

Logan saw the brawny blond fellow, bearing a glass in each hand, about to break away from the toy buyer, who was holding him conversational prisoner. Logan knew he must quickly make his bid with Laurie for name and number, and he switched from the talk of poetry to practical matters.

"Say, why don't we have lunch some day?"

"Lunch?"

Her eyes looked immense and wondrous, as if the suggestion were terribly original.

"Wha, that sounds charmin."

• • •

He took her to one of those long, thin places in Midtown, whose interior suggested an air shaft laid down flat and lined with red plush. On entering, a stranger might feel momentary fear that all the fuses had blown, before realizing the darkness was only part of the decor. It was possible, after being guided to a table, to barely discern the menu and the person opposite by means of a somewhat sinister and faint orange glow that seemed to emanate from behind the walls, and made Logan think of radioactivity. He had been there once with an editor friend on expense account and it signified to him the sort of dark elegance appropriate for the feeding of a beautiful female. Laurie indeed seemed delighted, if slightly bewildered.

"Is this where poets have lunch?" she asked.

"Not often. Today's a special occasion."

"Whatevah?"

"Well, poets don't usually lunch with beautiful women."

"Oh, rilly."

Her long eyelashes lowered to rest, and Logan ordered a pair of martinis. With the courage a long sip provided, he said, "You must have good taste, not to like the 'howling' poets. Do you like any other kinds?"

She took a healthy sip of her own martini.

"Well," she said, "Ah buhlieve Ah do, Ah mean, T. S. Eliot, fuh instance. Ah mean, Ah certainly respect the man. But Lawdie, Mistuh Logan, Ah might as well tell you Ah'm no intellectual. Ah mean, Ah only went to college up here—rill college—mah last year, and down home they just don't read at college. That year up here Ah learned an awful lot, but you can't learn everythin. Sometimes Ah think it was too much—hearin about all those things all at once, you just can't hardly keep em straight."

"What things?"

"Oh, like existentialism and Oedipus and ids and all that. Lawd knows what all."

"How come you happened to come up here your last year?"

"Oh, Mistuh Logan."

"Jim."

She reached across the table and gently touched his hand with her fingertips.

"Jim, that's a rill long story."

But she promised to tell it, and agreed to a dinner-and-theater date for Friday night.

• • •

Laurie lived in one of the new "luxury" apartment buildings that appear to be made of white bathroom tile. It had a blue canopy complete with matching doorman stationed underneath, and a junglelike lobby. Ersatz rubber plants sprouted from the floor, and a large, threatening mobile grew downward from the ceiling. When Logan touched the elevator button for the seventh floor, the doors whispered shut and the Muzak started. Standing in the day-bright container as it slid smoothly upward, lulled by the soft tinkly sounds, Logan momentarily imagined that a panel might slide back from the ceiling and a gentle spray would fall down to water him; or that he might, if he pressed the right button, keep going up and up beyond the city's skyline and land at last on some mattressed landscape above real life, where the lighting is always indirect and the only sound the anonymous ooze of Muzak.

Deposited on the seventh floor, he pressed the button on the door of Apartment E and a chime went off. After several silent moments, there was a hurried prancing sound across the floor inside and Laurie came, looking fragile and pale without her make-up.

"Ah'm still fixin," she explained. "Make yourself comf-table."

Logan walked into the somewhat-sterile-looking living room, and Laurie returned to her work in the bedroom. After sizing up several angular Danish-style chairs, Logan sat down on a burnt-gold couch and plucked a fashion journal from a metal magazine tray. He had carefully read—if not fully understood—an article on "The You Look" by the time Laurie reappeared in full feminine regalia. She was wearing a knit dress that displayed her attributes splendidly, and her honey-colored hair was whipped up into an elaborate do. She carried a fur coat that slightly dusted the floor as she semiswirled in front of Logan.

"Am Ah all right?" she asked.

Logan stood up, opened his mouth, and on the second attempt said simply, with great conviction, "Yes."

The play was the kind that is done on stools with spotlights playing on the speakers during their deliveries and the actors in darkness humming choral arrangements of an obviously high significance. It had to do with a young man coming to the great city and being cruelly disillusioned. Laurie thought it was "charmin in spots," but to Logan it was only a temporal obstacle separating him from the return to Laurie's apartment.

After the dinner and the play they had Irish coffee at an imitation pub in the East 60s that Laurie thought was cute as a button. Logan felt when they finally were back on her couch with a drink in hand that he had reached the end of an elaborate maze.

"Ah love to see new theatuh," she said, "but Ah still prefuh Arthur Miller." She tucked her legs up underneath her and tugged the knit dress down to the top of her knees, though it still slid a couple of inches back up. "Who's your own favorite?" she asked.

He gently took hold of her shoulders and drew her toward him.

"Mine's Miller, too," he whispered.

"Rilly?"

Her eyes enlarged with wonder as she looked up at him and he pressed his mouth against hers.

She neither resisted nor yielded and he tugged her in tighter, like an anxious fisherman, until she suddenly pushed away and reached for the inevitable cigarette. In that moment of deflation he wished—if only for the sake of feminine variety—that she had reached instead for a Tootsie Roll or a carving knife; for anything, in fact, but the cigarette and, (continued on page 176)Rich Girl(continued from page 94) soon, the comb. He reached for the Scotch and maintained a hurt and mildly hostile silence, respecting the ritual. Finally, after she had blown an especially lusty cloud of smoke, she said:

"Jim?"

"Yes?"

"There's somethin Ah have to tell you."

Oh, Christ. His mind was pummeled by the possibilities: was she married, divorced, a virgin, a callgirl, a mother, an orphan, diabetic, schizophrenic, frigid, promiscuous, in love, or in analysis? He had, at one time or another, and often in combinations, been confronted with each of those confessions during his past few years in New York, and, having learned that the single reliable reaction to them all was sympathy and assurance, he took her nearest hand in both of his and pressed it tenderly.

"It's all right," he said. "What is it?"

She made a return squeeze with her hand and then drew it away and sat up very straight. She looked quite magnificent, and he hoped that her terrible secret would not be a social disease.

"Well," she announced, "it's money."

"Money?"

For a moment, Logan's mind seemed to turn off, and he looked at Laurie very carefully. She was sitting with her hands folded in her lap, her head bent slightly down in evident embarrassment. After studying her for an indeterminate period of silence, Logan's brain, like a sluggish machine, began to crank forward again and he asked:

"How much?"

"Oh, a lot. An enormous lot."

"How much is enormous?"

He figured, roughly, that he had with him $11 and change.

Laurie jumped up, wringing her hands, and said, "Oh, millions or somethin scads of it. Ah don't even want to know exactly. Momma and Uncle Dobbs sat me down once and started telling me all about it and Ah just started cryin."

She turned back toward him with her eyes slightly red and said, "It's enough to make people unhappy. That's how much."

"You mean," Logan said, "this is your money you're talking about?"

She sank back down to the couch and smoothed out her skirt with both hands.

"At least a terrible lot of it's mine."

"Then what—what's the problem?"

She looked up at him with the eyes of a cursed kitten and said, "Darlin, Ah'm rich."

Logan did his best to sympathize. The problem—that is, the fortune—had come from a piece of land owned by "Momma" that turned out to be as rich underneath as it was barren on the surface. The life of the family went topsy-turvy, and the immediate effect on Laurie was her sudden removal from the university down home (which everyone admired because it was so big) to a fashionable college for women in the East (which everyone admired because it was so small). She had never again felt sure of anyone's feelings toward her or, rather, her fortune, which rudely stood between her and other people. Any sentiment seemed to reach her secondhand and was badly tarnished by the time it arrived. Some people liked her because her fortune was so large, and others disliked her because it was so new.

"Ah swear," Laurie said, twisting a handkerchief, "God blessed poor folks."

Logan leaned over and kissed her affectionately on the tip of her nose. She sniffed, dabbed at her eyes with the wrung handkerchief and looked at him cautiously.

"Then you don't mind? The money?"

He pulled her into his arms and deposited small kisses on her forehead, saying in between, "There, there." A fortune was one thing he never before had been asked to forgive, and he was able to do so with real sincerity.

Laurie's confession not only brought her and Logan closer together, but at the same time, left them in a subtle state of imbalance. The baring of some kinds of private information demands a similar gesture in return; it is part of the stylized striptease of the soul. Logan understood that the next removal was up to him.

• • •

"Would you like," he asked, already knowing the answer as they sat over the espresso of a leisurely dinner, "to hear some of my poems?"

"Jim! Would you?"

"If you'd like."

"Ah'd adore.''

They were, not by chance, at Rocco's on Bleecker Street, a few short blocks from where Logan lived.

From the way Laurie entered his apartment, it was difficult to tell if she was awed by the artistic aura of the place (teetering piles of books, maps covering cracks in the plaster, a door on sawhorses for a desk) or whether she was simply afraid of the dirt. Once inside, she walked as if passing through a mine field. But having made it to the center of the room, she evidently judged that she was too far in to get gracefully out and, taking a little breath, sank bravely and delicately to the floor.

Logan sloshed some dollar wine into coffee cups (he gave Laurie the one with the fewest brown rings inside), sat down on the folding chair beside his desk and began to read.

He began with several favorites from the works of his heroes and, properly warmed up then, proceeded to his own. It was always embarrassing to him that his own verse had the power of moving him more than that of any other poet, no doubt in the way that parents are more impressed with the simplest actions of their own child than the accomplished antics of anyone else's. When he read his own poems, Logan's voice cracked and quavered, and his eyes became slightly red and watery. After reading half a dozen, he was so carried away that he almost forgot his purpose in reading them. He looked down at Laurie and asked, "Enough?"

She closed her eyes and said, "More."

He read four others, and by then was really too moved to go on. His hand was shaking as he poured the last of the wine into their coffee cups. Laurie held hers with both hands, like a chalice, and sipped from it slowly while he gulped from his own.

"Ah wish," she said, looking not at him but over the rim of the cup, "that Ah—"

"Yes?"

"Well, Ah feel so feeble. Ah mean, Ah wish Ah could say somethin rill bright about your poems. Ah just love havin you say em to me."

"That's the nicest thing you could say."

He thought, in fact, how much nicer it was than the bright critical comments his verse called forth from the girls in dirty jeans and sweat shirts whose minds were like knives. He knelt down, hearing his knees crack. Laurie tenderly took his face in her hands and kissed him softly—almost reverently—on the mouth.

"Thank you," she said.

He managed to stand back up, weak with reward, and gallantly offered to take her home. He knew from her eyes he had touched her now and it would only be gross to claim his prize in the flush of the moment's triumph. He could now afford to wait a little, savoring what was to come, as confident as a man who has built up proper credit in the bank of his choice.

He kissed her conservatively as they stood outside the door of her apartment and said, "I'll be seeing you soon."

"Rill soon?"

"I'll call you tomorrow."

"Please."

Laurie had only been "involved"—as she would put it—with one man, but she didn't fully count it (the error, she hoped, had not been recorded in God's great scorebook), because the thing occurred in a darkened room and she "rilly" hadn't known what was happening until it was over. After that she resumed her vow never to get involved with a man that way unless she was married—or, at least, engaged. And so it happened, one early dim Sunday morning on the Danish couch of her apartment, that Laurie and Logan became engaged.

Logan was not especially anxious to publicize the event, and, in fact, the very mention of the word "engagement" made his throat feel oddly dry and his stomach unsettled. Laurie promised not to send word to The New York Times, but she did transmit the news to the beach at Acapulco. There Laurie's family and traveling companions had gone for rest and contemplation following their most recent cultural exercise, an exploration of some highly touted ruins recently written up in On the Co, a kind of National Geographic for credit-card holders. Mrs. Kemble had talked with her daughter on the telephone Sunday night (a weekly custom rigidly observed without regard to the crackling distances that often had to be overcome) and Laurie had revealed the news of her engagement to "a rill poet." Although she could hear quite clearly, the connection must have been bad in Acapulco, for her mother shouted back:

"He's rill what?"

"Ah say he's a rill poet. You know, writes poems."

After only the briefest of silences, her mother first expressed her delight and, on the heels of it, announced the happy coincidence that they all had been planning to come to New York the next week anyway to see the Johnny Carson show live and so would have a chance to meet the prospective new member of the family.

The candidate—for that was what Logan felt he had somehow become—did not seem overjoyed about the imminent meeting. Laurie could tell he was nervous, and went to great pains to reassure him.

"Daddy's no problem at all—he's rill quiet. And Momma—well, Momma's not like a mother at all. She's rill fun. Ah just know you'll like her."

"What about Momma liking me?"

"Oh, she will, darlin, she will!"

Laurie kissed Logan on the cheek and then, rather thoughtfully, asked, "How could she not?"

"Well, for one thing, I'm poor."

"But we're rich!"

"That's the point. What if she thinks I'm after your money?"

"Wha, Ah'll just explain."

"Explain what?"

"How we're just goin to pretend it's not there."

"We are?"

"Wha, of course, darlin. We want to be happy, don't we?"

"I suppose so."

"Well, then, we don't want the old stuff." She stared at him rather intently and asked, "Do we?"

"Well, no. I guess not. I hadn't really thought about it."

"Ah know, you see, all it does is cause trouble. We'll just pretend we don't have it and it won't hurt us any. Then, you know, maybe when we're old we'll do somethin with it."

"Like what?"

"Oh, Ah don't know. Ah s'pose there's lots you could do."

"I imagine."

Logan was actually innocent of any premeditated plan to marry Laurie for her money—or, in fact, until events had seemed to get out of his control, to marry her for any reason at all. Even when he thought of the marriage, Logan did not have dreams of plundering Laurie's fortune, but vaguely imagined drawing modest annual fellowships out of its interest that would hardly even be missed. But the thought of supporting her himself was staggering. The price of her lessons and clothes alone could hardly be matched by the modest annual subsistence salary he made by teaching English at a dismal night school. That was enough for supporting Logan and his poems, but not much else, and even the costly courtship of Laurie had led to the grim prospect of teaching an extra section of Communications 1-A the following semester.

When Logan very gently poked around the problem in Laurie's presence, she brightly offered to take an office job. The impulse was noble, but hardly seemed plausible when Logan tried to imagine Laurie's long and trimly tapered fingernails tangled in the keys of a typewriter. The whole idea of his marriage to Laurie was unthinkable; and so he simply stopped thinking about it. Instead, he focused all his attention on meeting the challenge presented by her family. If for no other reason, it seemed he was bent on marrying Laurie in order to prove he could not justifiably be denied that opportunity. The extension of her family's blessing became confused in his mind with the very upholding of democratic principles.

• • •

"When you—when we—meet mah folks, darlin—"

"Yes, dear?"

She ran her tongue over her lips in a manner that for once seemed more anxious than sensuous.

"Are you goin to wear your corduroy jacket?"

The question came supplied with its own answer, and Logan had only to verbalize the obvious.

"Of course not, dear."

He purchased for the occasion a suit of the latest Italian cut, a creation so sleek that the trousers not only lacked cuffs, but also belt loops, and the jacket had no pockets, and only two buttons, and zinged away from his midriff in streamlined splendor. The salesman assured him it fit his personality, as well as his rather unathletic figure, and, dismissing conservative doubts, Logan had to admit that it made him feel rather rakish.

"Darlin, Ah wouldn't have known you!" Laurie said when she saw him in it, and it seemed to Logan that the obvious delight of the statement was perhaps a mixed compliment.

"You look," she exclaimed, "positively trim."

"I feel trim," he whispered.

The trousers were, in fact, rather snug, and Logan felt as if a thin piece of wire was cutting through his waist. He managed to sit down on Laurie's couch, but for once could only sip at his Scotch; every extra ounce threatened his consciousness.

"Ah just know y'all will love each other."

"You're sure?"

"Wha, yes, aren't you?"

"Well, who knows? Things can go wrong."

"What things?"

"Jesus, Laurie, any things. How the hell do I know?"

She bit at her lip, and her eyes became suddenly blurry.

"Ah just can't abide swearin."

"I'm sorry, honey. But, for God's sake, don't cry!"

"No, darlin, Ah won't," she said, sobbing. "Ah just know everythin's goin to be all right!"

He belched, and unbuttoned the top button of his trousers.

"Of course it is. For Christ, sake, why are we worrying?"

"Lawd knows, darlin, Lawd knows!"

She smiled hysterically, her face awash with tears and cosmetics.

• • •

Mrs. Kemble had commandeered a series of suites at the Plaza for her entourage, and assembled the company for cocktails in her sitting room. The moment Laurie entered the room, she was smothered in Momma's mauling embrace, while Logan stood fidgeting and smiling behind them. When Laurie was freed, she looked a bit disheve'ed, but smiled bravely and took Logan's hand.

"Momma," she said, "Ah want you to meet mah—"

"Oh, but darlin," Mrs. Kemble cried, "Ah almost forgot! First, before anythin else, Ah want you to meet—"

Momma pulled Laurie through the room, with Logan following uncertainly, feeling a bit like a bellhop trailing along in hopes of a tip. Laurie waved "Hi y'all" to the assembled guests, who were busy at their drinks. Logan nodded nervously and tried to hold his smile in place. In the bedroom, Mrs. Kemble opened a box and pulled out some sort of figurine about a foot high. The thing had a pained expression, perhaps due to a missing arm or the weight of the elaborate contraption on its head, which might have been either a basket or a crown.

"Darlin," Mrs. Kemble said to Laurie, "Ah want you to meet Raymond. Ah call him that because he looks like old Raymond, the one that used to do the lawn for us."

Laurie giggled nervously and said, "Hello, Raymond."

"Isn't he precious?" Mrs. Kemble cooed. "He's pre-Columbian. We all fell in love with the culture down there. Did you know they had one? Raymond is some sort of priest—or is it rain god? Lawd knows, he cost enough."

She held him up in front of her happily heaving bosom and announced, "Raymond is going to preside."

Laurie and Logan followed Momma out of the sitting room again and watched as she placed Raymond in the center of the coffee table.

"Mother," Laurie said, "Ah'm glad to meet Raymond, and Ah'd like you to meet Jim Logan, mah—"

Mrs. Kemble threw a grin over Logan's shoulder and said, "We're just folks, honey, make yourself at home."

Logan smiled, but before he could answer, Mrs. Kemble swished off to feed a cracker piled high with caviar to Sam Houston, her parakeet. Laurie took Logan's hand again and led him around to meet the others. There was Uncle Dobbs, whose considerable girth was covered by a custom-made alpaca vest, draped with a heavy gold watch chain. Beside him was Aunt Shelley, a statuesque young lady who had managed to contain her admirable physical endowments in a glistening silver sheath. She yawned after being introduced and returned to examining her matching silver fingernails, an activity that seemed to bring boundless pleasure to the doting Uncle Dobbs. The rest of the party was milling around the room, each for his own reason, but Laurie managed to corner them all for introductions: Winnie and Vinnie, the two colored maids (those were not their real names, but Mrs. Kemble had once seen a movie with a pair of maids named Winnie and Vinnie and thought it was cute), two French poodles named St. Mark and St. Matthew, an aging but grand-mannered former diva of the Viennese Opera whom Momma had discovered in St. Moritz, a hairdresser named Freddie, Sam Houston the parakeet and, pacing alone in the shadows with a giant martini in his hand, Mr. Ephraim Kemble, a tall, gaunt man with sunken eyes who smiled often, spoke seldom and, as far as possible, kept out of Mrs. Kemble's path.

A violinist wearing a tuxedo and a terrified expression joined the group and began sawing out soft gypsy music. The sorrowful strains inspired Elena, the diva, to dance by herself around the room with a cocktail glass in one hand and a gold-silk scarf in the other, while Uncle Dobbs clapped his hands in rhythm to some unheard drummer.

Logan hurried down his first martini, and Mrs. Kemble brought him another when she came to sit down on the couch with him and Laurie. She looked at Logan directly for the first time, and he shifted in his seat, feeling unaccountably guilty.

"Child," Mrs. Kemble said, "Laurie has told me all about you."

As far as Logan knew, Laurie had told her mother nothing more about him than that he was a poet. But that was evidently enough.

"Isn't he cute, Momma?" Laurie asked hopefully.

"What, darlin?"

Laurie pressed her hand on Logan's wrist and said, "Stand up, darlin, show her your new suit."

Logan found himself rising from the couch and turning slowly around, smiling. Uncle Dobbs poked his thumbs in the pockets of his alpaca vest and yelled above the violinist's efforts, "Suck in that gut, son."

"Isn't he, Mother?" Laurie asked again. "Isn't he cute?"

"He certainly needs a shine," Mrs. Kemble said.

Logan looked down at his shoes, which were scuffed and dull.

"That's always the first thing Ah notice when Ah look at a man," Mrs. Kemble said.

"You wish to dance!" cried Elena, the diva. Logan looked up to see her rushing toward him, arms outstretched. He jumped back instinctively, and careened into the coffee table, falling backward in a full-scale crash. It was not the screams or the sound of breaking glass that Logan was later to remember; rather, it was the small crunch he heard when he sat up. It turned out to be the crunch of terra cotta. Pre-Columbian.

"Mah Cod!" Mrs. Kemble screamed. "It's Raymond!"

In the general melee, Laurie hustled Logan out to the hall. Her eyes were dull and moist and she simply stared at him, shaking her head.

"How much," he asked, "do you suppose the thing cost?"

"Too much, darlin," she said in a monotone. "Way too much."

"Is there anything I can do?" he asked feebly.

"Ah think," she said, "you've done all you can."

• • •

The ringing of the phone pierced Logan's head the next morning so repeatedly that he found it less painful to answer than to listen.

It was Laurie's voice, but it sounded flat, as if punctured.

"You wanna come up?"

"To your place?"

"Yes."

"What about your family?"

There was a slight pause.

"They left today."

"I thought they were going to see the Johnny Carson show tonight."

"Momma said they'd catch it next time around."

"Oh."

"Can you come?"

"Sure."

Laurie was wearing an unpressed man's white shirt and purple stretch pants. Her hair was pulled back and her face was puffy, with no attempt at makeup. He rather liked her that way, not as the former object of his romantic pursuit, but, rather, as a fellow veteran who has been through the same unsuccessful campaign. They concentrated on sipping their drinks, and once Logan pulled Laurie to him for a kiss that neither of them could work into being any more than perfunctory. Their engagement and, along with it, the attraction between them, seemed to have evaporated into the lifeless air of the room, leaving nothing more than the faint remaining odor of Laurie's perfume and Logan's perspiration, a powerful potion gone stale and slightly offensive that was stubbornly clinging to the skin of the couch. They found they had nothing much to say to each other, but kept a silence both respectful and friendly, if burned around the edges with embarrassment. Logan closed his eyes and let nothing enter his mind except the steady hum of the apartment, a sound that he thought of as some kind of theme song or trademark of the place, coming from the hidden electric heart of the building itself; he wondered if he and Laurie and all the other inhabitants of that highly wired hive were being slowly and unnoticeably sautéed.

He left in the late afternoon, coldly placing a peck on Laurie's dry mouth and propelling his drained and aching body, by a mindless exertion of will, onto Madison Avenue to wait for a cab. He turned up the collar of his dirty raincoat, feeling in that natty neighborhood like some sort of unshaven alien who might at any moment be arrested for failure to produce an appropriate identity card.

That evening he sat by himself drinking wine, looking out the window and listening to old Miles Davis records. The horn and the wine were soothing, and slowly Logan began to feel not only calm but comfortable. Some time after dark he stole out of the apartment with a bundle wrapped in old newspapers, and several blocks from his building he stuffed the mysterious package beneath several layers that had formed in a litter basket. He walked back whistling, feeling immeasurably lighter and deeply relieved. At least he'd never again come so close to being caught dead in a sharply cut Italian suit.