THE FIRST PERSON I SAW AT THE EMBASSY THAT I RECOGNIZED was Boog. He was talking to the second person I recognized, Sir Cripps Crisp. The two of them were standing by a small tree that had somehow been coaxed up through the floor of the Embassy.
Apart from the fact that he was standing upright, Sir Cripps gave no sign of life.
Boog was wearing a raspberry tuxedo that would have nicely outfitted the maître d’ of a dinner theater in Killeen, Texas, or somewhere.
“There’s Boog,” I said to Cindy, but she was by this time well out of her period of afterglow. Also she was pissed at me for having taken too long to park.
“Do I look like I’m blind?” she said.
At the time we were about eighty-sixth in the receiving line, a position Cindy clearly did not relish. Her natural impatience, deflected briefly by a little sex, had returned with a vengeance.
“At least Khaki’s here,” she said, having evidently spotted someone she knew.
Her impatience made me nervous. I myself evidently have too much patience—a useful quality if one spends half one’s life waiting in auctions—and female impatience always makes me nervous, as if it were somehow my responsibility to hurry the universe.
“Khaki who?” I asked.
Cindy turned and looked at me. The friendly look she had given me when I had the hard-on in the shower might have occurred a year ago. My reluctance to park my Cadillac in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue had finished off the friendliness, at least for a time. She insisted that the middle of the street was under the protection of the Embassy, but I didn’t believe her. I parked anyway.
“Haven’t you ever heard of Khaki Descartes?” she asked.
“I may have,” I said, trying to look thoughtful.
Cindy waited, skeptically. I kept looking thoughtful for about thirty seconds, and then gave up.
“I guess I haven’t heard of her,” I admitted sorrowfully.
“You could try reading a newspaper,” she said.
In fact I often try reading newspapers. I’m just a flop at it. The only part that really interests me is the want ads. The news itself seems to be an interchangeable commodity: today’s is seldom very different from last week’s.
But want ads are ever fresh. What people are willing to try and sell or buy bespeaks the true variety of the human race. News only bespeaks the old constants: war and famine, earthquake and flood, politics and murder.
That very morning I had clipped a wonderful ad from the Post. “Authority on animal architecture wishes to sell approx. 10,000 nests” it said.
I thought that was wonderful. Some old person had actually spent a lifetime collecting nests. In all my years as a scout I had only seen one or two varnished hornet’s nests for sale.
Naturally I called the collector at once and made an appointment to see his nests. He sounded like he was munching a nest when I called, though probably he was only eating Shredded Wheat.
Just having the appointment made me feel hopeful. A world that harbored a nest collector was a world that could be enjoyed.
The minute we got through the receiving line Cindy abandoned me.
The experience of the receiving line was not very enjoyable, either. A row of diplomats was planted at the head of it like small tuxedoed shrubs. Shaking hands with them turned out to be really creepy. Their hands were like fleshlike plants. Their plantlike fingers made no attempt to close around my hand, or any hand. We just rubbed palms—their hands swished slightly as the receiving line trotted by. Most of their palms were clammy, too.
The minute Cindy got through the line she made straight for a small ferretlike redhead in a khaki safari suit. Within seconds they were chattering like sisters. The redhead stared at me, but Cindy didn’t beckon me to join them.
It was clear she was not the kind of girl who forgives a slow parker.
Feeling at a loss, I turned toward Boog, only to discover that he and Sir Cripps had left their position by the tree and disappeared. Like Brisling Bowker, they moved with stealth when the mood struck them.
I let a stream of people carry me through a door into a huge hall, where the first person I saw was Boss Miller. She was walking along talking to a tall, graying, tightly wound man with an aristocratic manner. I would have bet he was a squash player, squash being a game the tightly wound excel at.
Boss seemed greatly amused by him, but then she was greatly amused by most men, myself, Micah, and Boog being no exceptions. She was wearing a black silk dress and a magnificent string of pearls. Boog had expended a whole oil well on the pearls, in Paris years before.
Coming upon Boss unexpectedly, in the great hall of the Embassy, put life in a new perspective, suddenly. Boss seemed not merely beautiful, she seemed timeless. She could have been wearing that dress and those pearls in any capital, in any modern century.
Boss tossed her head in a way that meant I should come over, so I went over.
“Have you met Spud?” she asked, nodding toward the tightly wound aristocrat at her side.
Spud took me in at a glance. His glance did not have the radarlike qualities of Freddy Fu’s, but it certainly had flash. When he looked at me I felt like I feel when a flashbulb goes off: exposed. Then he gave me by far the hardest handshake I had ever had from anyone in a tuxedo.
“Spud Breyfogle,” Boss said, “meet Cadillac Jack.”
“A pleasure,” Spud said.
He nodded at me, gave Boss a knowing look, and turned away. For some reason he reminded me of Paul Henreid, in Casablanca, although he looked more like William Holden than Paul Henreid.
“He doesn’t look like someone who would be named Spud,” I said. The only other Spud I had known had been a small saddle-bronc rider from Junction, Texas. His name had been Spud Welch.
“Spud’s a nickname,” Boss said. “His real name is Newton. He’s the most competitive man I ever met.”
Then she slipped her arm through mine in a friendly way.
As we were promenading I noticed that Boss had an avid look in her eye. I followed the look, to see if there was a man in the crowd that she could be wanting, and discovered that we were actually promenading along beside a feast. One whole side of the great hall was given over to tables heaped with food. Three or four lambs lay atop great piles of rice, cooked to a crisp. Other tables were piled with seafood: shrimp, squid, smoked salmon, tiny fish. There was even a vast tureen of caviar. It seemed to be the caviar that prompted Boss’s avid look.
Nearby was a vast tub of couscous, surrounded by platters of flat bread.
All the food was roped off behind thick velvet ropes. They were the kinds of ropes used in the foyers of movie theaters, to restrain eager crowds.
This crowd was eager, too. Most of the people in the receiving line had looked half dead, but the sight of a feast had brought them back to life. They were massed three deep behind the velvet ropes. Almost every eye in the house was shining, like Boss’s, and a good many faces were shining, too. The sight of so much food must have released internal floods of gastric juices, causing sweat to pop out on many faces. The people were oblivious to one another. Lamb, caviar, and big pulpy shrimp were what they wanted.
I felt slightly revolted by the sight of so many avid, sweaty people—a totally unwarranted reaction, since I see avid sweaty people massed together at auctions every day. Also I felt an equally unwarranted jealousy of Spud Breyfogle.
“Is Spud famous?” I asked.
Boss chuckled. “Most famous editor in America,” she said.
Then she lifted her head alertly. She seemed to be waiting for a signal. While she waited she adroitly edged into the crowd. All around us, alert men and women were edging into the crowd, skillfully displacing some of the people who were already there. Many of those who were already there seemed to be in a trance. They had made the mistake of edging in too soon and had sweated themselves out. They looked like exhausted runners, so wobbly as to be unaware that they were losing their positions to cool latecomers like Boss. Their unseeing eyes were still fixed on the food.
Meanwhile, Boss had taken my hand. She evidently had a use for me. As the crowd got thicker we were crushed together. Boss was sidling slowly toward the velvet ropes. Once in a while she gave my hand an encouraging squeeze. Crushed in the crowd, we were almost having an intimate moment.
As greed for objects welds crowds at an auction, greed for food welded this crowd. It was hard to imagine that such a well-dressed crowd could look so hungry. I’ve been to some wild barbecues down in Texas, where whole beeves were consumed, and yet I’d never seen a Texas crowd crammed up together, beaded with sweat. It didn’t seem possible that a lot of people well off enough to own tuxedoes could be so hungry, and yet they seemed oblivious to everything but the food.
“Why are they so hungry?” I whispered to Boss, brushing back her dark hair so I could get to her ear.
Boss was uninterested in the question, but she seemed briefly interested in the fact that I had brushed back her hair. She looked at me curiously, as if she expected me to try and kiss her. It had not been my intention, but I saw no harm in trying. The crowd would never notice. It was oblivious to who was kissing whom. I bent to kiss her and it looked for a tenth of a second like it might work. But just at that moment, she smiled.