AS A BOSOM-TILTER, LILAH LANDRY WAS WORLD CLASS. BY tilting adroitly she managed to make her bosom seem more interesting than anyone who could possibly have arrived in our vicinity, and even while I was enjoying the exhibition, I had the definite sense that someone was emitting heat waves of displeasure.
When I finally looked around I saw that the arrivee was the small redhead in the khaki safari suit.
“It wouldn’t be a Washington party without you eating out of some man’s hand, would it, Lilah?” she said.
The redhead had a face that put me in mind of a drill, and a voice that suggested sandpaper.
Lilah didn’t seem in the least disturbed by the remark. She just gave me a blithe look and moved off toward the seafood table. Before I knew it I was alone with the redhead.
“Hello, Jack,” she said, shaking hands. “Don’t you think we ought to talk?”
I would have been more inclined to think so if I had had some inkling of what she did. All I knew was that she put me in mind of drills. She had an intense, button-eyed manner, and she didn’t let go of my hand.
“Do you want some caviar?” I asked.
The question stumped her momentarily. For a second or two her face lost its drill-like aspects and just looked like the face of a small hungry woman.
“George would kill me if I ate some,” she said a little wistfully. “He doesn’t approve of this regime. I don’t think he’d tolerate it if I ate their caviar.
“It’s difficult living with a moralist,” she added. “George is not flexible. His moral vision is twenty-twenty. If I eat one bite of this caviar he’ll throw a fit.”
Instead of talking, we began to walk through the thinning crowd. While we were walking I saw a reporter’s notebook sticking out of her handbag, which explained what she did, at least. She was a reporter, not a Cabinet member.
Most of the people in the thinning crowd looked sleepy. They had stuffed, now they wanted to sleep. In fact, some of the older diplomats had started sleeping already; they were being guided toward the exits by their well-trained wives.
Suddenly the spectral figure of Eviste Labouchere wobbled up. He spotted Khaki and rushed to embrace her as a colleague.
“Ah Khakee, Khakee!!” he exclaimed.
“Get lost, you little turd,” Khaki said, in unsentimental tones.
Eviste looked a little hurt by Khaki’s remark, which was more or less the rhetorical equivalent of a splash of acid.
“But Khakee,” he said woefully. “I am going your way. I will give you a ride on Anouk.”
“Like shit you will,” Khaki said.
“George will probably strangle you when he hears about this,” she added, in her sandiest tones. Once again she was burning with displeasure—her heat had a Saharan quality.
If Khaki was the pitiless desert, Eviste was the lost Legionnaire, the one who is never going to make it back to the fort. He stood looking woeful for a moment and then turned and stumbled away.
“Who’s Anouk?” I asked, thinking Eviste might have a giant girl friend hidden away somewhere. After all, he had just offered Khaki a ride on her.
“That’s what he calls his motor scooter,” Khaki said, looking disgusted. “He named it after Anouk Aimée.”