IT FEELS SILLY TO KISS A SMILE. AT BEST YOU JUST SORT OF bump teeth. With Boss even that might be sexy, but as things stood, or as we stood, it seemed even sillier than it might have in another context.
I quickly lost belief in the notion that she had meant to kiss me. I felt embarrassed, but Boss seemed not the least bit embarrassed. She had a lot of confidence in her powers, it seemed.
“These people aren’t hungry,” she said. “These people are just bored.”
She kept hold of my wrist and concentrated on edging ever closer to the velvet ropes.
She was a good edger, too. The trick seemed to be to move sideways, using one’s lead elbow like a plow. As I watched, Boss plowed right between two short glassy-eyed Indonesians, her bosom passing just over their heads. A couple of tall, gloomy-looking Scandinavians had been blocking our view all along, but Boss somehow sidled right between them.
In three minutes we were standing next to the velvet ropes, directly in front of the tureen of caviar. Boss’s eyes were shining and she was not even particularly sweaty, although there was a bead or two on her upper lip.
“You better get ready,” she said.
Despite my constant immersion in the passions of auctions, I could not get over the avidity of this crowd. Even those who were glassy-eyed from the heat and the crush were trembling with eagerness.
Ten seconds later the ropes were removed. It was as if the roof had opened, dropping about five hundred people directly onto a feast.
I had no sensation of moving at all, but in an instant Boss and I were at the caviar bowl. I stood directly behind her, functioning like a rear bumper. People bumped into me, rather than her. A thicket of hands reached past me, trying to reach the bowl and slop a little caviar on some toast. There were little brown Indonesian hands, on arms long enough to reach around both Boss and myself. There were fat hands, mottled hands, be-ringed hands, skinny hands, and hands with sweaty palms. Having them waving all around me, like a sea of reeds, was creepy. I didn’t even feel like I was among people. I felt like I was surrounded by a lot of wet plants.
While people were trying to reach around us, Boss and her peers were eating caviar. One of her peers was Sir Cripps Crisp, who must have been as good at edging as Boss was. He appeared out of nowhere and began methodically popping little caviar-heaped wedges of toast into his mouth.
Boss did the same, from time to time passing me a wedge. Once in a while she looked around at me and grinned, a fish egg or two momentarily stuck to her lips.
“Beastly,” Sir Cripps said, while heaping himself another wedge. He was obviously a practiced man. In a second he could erect a neat pyramid of fish eggs on his wedge of toast. While his mouth worked on one pyramid his hand would be erecting the next.
His complaint was not lost on Boss.
“What’s the matter with you, Jimmy?” she asked.
I was startled to hear Sir Cripps spoken to so familiarly, but he himself was not in the least offended. He actually raised his eyebrows when Boss spoke to him. They went up so slowly that it seemed they were probably powered by a little motor in his head, as if they were stage curtains. His eyes were an attractive and rather twinkly blue. It may have been the sight of Boss with fish eggs on her lips that caused them to twinkle.
“Beastly there’s no vodka,” he said. “Very irregular.”
Boss opened a mother-of-pearl cocktail purse and took out a tiny silver flask. She opened it, took a swig, and handed the flask to Sir Cripps, who took a swig and handed it to me. They both looked at me impatiently, so I took a swig, too.
“You know Jimmy, don’t you?” Boss asked, in much the way she had asked if I knew Spud Breyfogle.
I nodded, and Sir Cripps continued to erect pyramids of caviar.
“Jimmy writes the best cables in town,” Boss said, giving him a little pat. “He used to bring ’em over and read ’em to me. Then we’d get drunk and he’d write a few in Latin. I think one of the ones in Latin nearly started a war, didn’t it, Jimmy?”
Sir Cripps shrugged. “Only in Maseratu,” he said. “Not difficult to start a war in Maseratu. Very excitable people.”
Between the two of them they put away an amazing amount of caviar.
Being tall I was able to scan the crowd. Cindy was at the shrimp table, between Boog and Spud Breyfogle. Boog was gobbling shrimp, and Spud was dispensing a good deal of tightly wound charm for Cindy’s benefit.
Meanwhile, Sir Cripps, whom I had considered to all intents and purposes a dead man, had come alive and was twinkling at Boss in a manner that suggested he might even still be capable of romance. He looked quite animated, perhaps because Boss was allowing him a snort of vodka after every wedge of caviar and toast.
Then I happened to notice the hapless Eviste Labouchere, a few steps away at the couscous bowl. Hapless is a word that might have been coined especially for him. In a room containing five hundred gluttons he still managed to stand out, thanks to the rate at which he was stuffing down the couscous. He ate like he was starving. Of course, he might have been starving. For all I knew he hadn’t eaten since the Penrose dinner. Certainly he looked awful. He had clearly been living in his tux for several days, and at some point had come into contact with a dog, or at least with a place where a dog had spent time. His dinner jacket was covered with dog hairs. He had a wild, almost demented look in his eye as he scooped couscous out of the giant bowl.
Lilah Landry, his one-time date, was standing between the couscous and the caviar, watching Eviste go at it. She looked faintly sickened. Perhaps the sight of him gobbling couscous had brought home to her the fact that he wasn’t really a star.
I think I must have looked at her at the precise moment when their romance ended. Eviste didn’t notice it ending, but I did. Boss and Sir Cripps were having a tête-a-tête, and had forgotten me, so I had nothing to do but look. Also I was faintly worried about what sort of lubricity Spud might be whispering in Cindy’s ear.
While I was pondering the general inconclusiveness of life, Lilah arrived at my side, tall, beautiful, and dizzy.
“How you?” she said, startling me.
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to appear composed and at ease.
“How’s Eviste?” I asked, in an attempt to make conversation.
Lilah just continued to smile her famous smile. The minute some women get through with a man their brains simply erase them, as tape recorders erase tape. Coffee had never bothered to erase me, but she had erased any number of Roberts and Richards.
I had the feeling that at the very moment the equivalent of an empty tape was whirling through Lilah’s brain—a tape that had once contained memories of Eviste Labouchere.
To make up for my unnoticeable opening note, I offered her some caviar. This was possible because Boss and Sir Cripps had quietly vanished, leaving me undisputed access to the bowl.
Instead of taking the wedge of toast and caviar I offered her and feeding it to herself, Lilah leaned over and nipped off half the wedge, in the process exposing much of the creamy bosom that had so recently harbored a pug.
Then she straightened up and chewed lazily for a moment.
“Well, I vow and declare,” she said. “Look who’s here.”
Before I could look she caught my wrist, leaned over, and ate the rest of the wedge.