GUS LEROY MET POLLY Andrews at a party given by Libby in May the following year. It was 1936, and half the group were married. Of the old crowd, Libby had invited only Priss, who couldn’t come, and Polly and Kay; the others, she had rather lost sight of. She was serving a May bowle, made of Liebfraumilch and fresh strawberries and sweet woodruff. There was a special store where you could get the woodruff, dried and imported from Germany; it was over on Second Avenue, under the El, a dusty old German firm with apothecary jars and old apothecaries’ scales and mortars and pestles in the window. Polly could not possibly miss it, Libby said on the phone; it was right around the corner from where she lived, and she could stop and get the woodruff for Libby any day on her way home from work. If she brought it the day before the party, that would be in plenty of time; it only had to steep overnight. Polly worked as a technician at Cornell Medical Center, giving basal metabolism tests chiefly, which meant that she had to be at the hospital the first thing in the morning, when the patients woke up. But she got off early in the afternoons, which Libby didn’t, and took the Second Avenue El home quite often—she lived on Tenth Street, near St. Mark’s Place, almost catercorner from St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie, where the rector, Dr. Guthrie, had such beautiful liturgy, though Polly never took advantage of it and slept Sunday mornings.
The herbal firm was nine blocks from Polly’s place; trust Polly, who could be prickly in her mild, smiling, obstinate way, to let that transpire when she appeared with the woodruff at Libby’s apartment. But they were nine short blocks, dear, Libby retorted, and Polly could use the fresh air and exercise. When she heard Polly’s description of the shop’s display of pharmacopoeia—all the old herbs and simples and materia medica in big stoppered glass jars with the Latin names written in crabbed Gothic lettering—she was sorry she had not gone herself, in a taxi. But to reward Polly for her pains, Libby had taken them both out to dinner at a new place in the Village, and afterward they had come back to the apartment and got the bowle started and everything organized for the party. Polly had a passion for flowers (she did wonders that evening with Libby’s mountain dogwood), and she was efficient in the kitchen. Libby had persuaded her to make Mr. Andrews’ famous chicken-liver pâté, a receipt he had brought back from France, and, having splurged on chicken livers at the market, she stood by watching Polly sauter them and laboriously push them through a sieve. “Aren’t you doing them too rare?” she suggested. “Kay says she always cooks everything fifteen minutes longer than the recipe calls for.” Libby was scandalized by the amount of fresh print butter Polly mixed in afterward, plus brandy and sherry—no wonder the Andrews family was insolvent. But Polly was sweet to do it and tenacious about having her own way, once she started on something. All the Andrews were like that. Mr. Andrews, Polly said, clung to making his own stock and boiling it down for the glaze, but Polly consented to use Campbell’s consommé to line the mold, thank Heaven; otherwise, they would have been up till dawn. As it was, Libby was completely exhausted by the time Polly left. Just pushing those livers through a sieve had taken nearly an hour. She would not hear of Polly’s washing up; a colored maid was coming the next afternoon to clean and serve at the party.
Fortunately, Polly could take the Eighth Street bus home; it was a long walk from Libby’s place, just west of Fifth Avenue, and you had to pass some pretty sinister lofts and warehouses. Polly’s apartment, though in a fairly decent block, was not as attractive as Libby’s, which had high ceilings and a fireplace and windows almost down to the floor. In fact, it was flattery to call Polly’s an apartment. It was really a furnished room and bath, with a studio bed, which Polly had covered with a pretty patchwork quilt from home, and some worn Victorian chairs and a funny old marble-topped table with lion’s-claw feet, and a two-burner hot plate and some shelves covered with bright-blue oilcloth in one white-curtained-off corner, and an icebox that leaked. At least it was clean; the family were professional people (actually, the wife was Vassar, Class of ’18), and Polly had made friends with the other lodgers—two refugees, one a white Russian and the other a German-Jewish socialist—and always had funny stories to tell about them and their violent discussions. Polly was a sympathetic soul; everybody she met told her their troubles and probably borrowed money from her. Yet, poor girl, her family could not afford to send her a cent. Her Aunt Julia, who lived on Park and Seventy-second, had given her some china and a chafing dish, but she did not realize how the other half lived; for one thing, she had heart trouble and could not climb Polly’s stairs. In her day, St. Mark’s Place had been a nice neighborhood, and she did not know that things had changed. Still, Polly’s apartment would be perfectly suitable if she did not have this habit of letting herself be imposed on by strangers. The German-Jewish man, for instance, Mr. Schneider, was constantly bringing her little presents, colored marzipan in the shape of fruits (once he brought her a marzipan hot dog, which for some reason delighted Polly), chocolate-covered ginger, a tiny pot with a St. Patrick’s Day shamrock, and in return Polly was helping him with his English, so that he could get a better job. This meant that almost every evening he was tapping at her door. Libby had met him one night—a dwarf, practically, with frizzy grey hair in a mop and a thick accent but old enough (Libby was glad to see) to be Polly’s father, if Mr. Andrews had not been almost old enough himself to be her grandfather. You found the most curious visitors at Polly’s, most of them ancient as the hills: Ross, her Aunt Julia’s maid, who you had to admit was a sketch, sitting there doing her knitting, having brought Polly some lamb chops from her aunt’s butcher on Park Avenue; the White Russian, poor devil, who liked to play chess with Polly; the iceman. Well, that was a bit exaggerated, but Polly did have an awfully funny story about the Italian iceman, a veritable troglodyte, coming in one day with the ice on his shoulder this last March and saying “Tacks” over and over and Polly offering him thumbtacks and him shaking his head saying “No, no, lady; tacks!”; it turned out, believe it or not, that he was having trouble with his income-tax return, which he whipped out of his back pocket with his horny hand—only Polly would have an iceman who paid income tax. Naturally, she sat down and helped him with the arithmetic and his business deductions and dependents. Yet when one of her friends asked something of her, she might suddenly flush up and say, “Libby, you can perfectly well do that yourself.”
To look at, she was one of those “gentle ray of sunshine” girls—very fair, with almost flaxen hair, the color of pale straw or rough raw silk, big blue eyes, and milk-white skin, bluish, like skim milk; she had a soft, plump chin with a sort of dimple or cleft in it, plump white arms, and a wide, open brow. Some people thought she looked like Ann Harding in the movies, but she was not as tall as Ann Harding. She had taken to wearing her hair in braids around her broad head; she thought it was neater, for the hospital, all coiled around like that. The trouble was, it made her look older. When Priss was having her last miscarriage, in New York Hospital, in semi-private, Polly had stopped in to visit her every day, which was easy for her since she worked there; seeing her in her white coat and low-heeled shoes and those matronly braids, the other patient thought Polly must be at least twenty-six. She had been on the Daisy Chain (that made four in the group—Libby herself, Lakey, Kay, and Polly—which was sort of a record), but Libby had never agreed that Polly was beautiful. She was too placid and colorless, unless she smiled. Kay had cast her as the Virgin in the Christmas pantomime senior year, which she directed, but this was to give her a pickup from having broken her engagement to the boy with the bad heredity. Actually, behind that placid exterior, Polly was rather emotional but very good fun, really a delightful companion, with an original point of view. All the Andrews were original. Polly had majored in Chemistry, thinking that she might be a doctor, but when Mr. Andrews lost his money, naturally she had to give that up; luckily, the college Vocational Bureau had got her placed at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center. All the group hoped she would meet some ravishing young doctor or pathologist who would want to marry her, but so far this had not happened or if so no one knew about it. About herself, Polly was very reserved. It sometimes sounded as if she saw nobody but her aunt and those strange inhabitants of her rooming house and other girls with jobs, some of them pretty dreary—the type, as Kay said, that had bulbs of paper narcissuses growing in their windows in a dish from the five-and-ten. This capacity for making lackluster friends, especially of her own sex, was Polly’s faiblesse. The Chem majors at college were a case in point, worthy souls, no doubt, but the science majors as a group (credit Kay for this observation too) were about the lowest stratum at Vassar. They were the ones, as Kay said, you would not remember when you came back for your tenth reunion: pathetic cases with skin trouble and superfluous hair and thick glasses and overweight or underweight problems and names like Miss Hasenpfeffer. What would happen to them afterward? Would they all go home and become pillars of their community and send their daughters back to Vassar to perpetuate the type or would they go into teaching or medicine, where you might even hear of them some day? “Dr. Elfrida Katzenbach is with the Rockefeller Institute—Congratulations, Katzy,” you would read in the alumnae news and “Who was she?” you would ask yourself. Astronomy and Zoology were a little different—Pokey had majored in Zoology and, would wonders never cease incidentally, last year she had up and married a poet, a sort of distant cousin who was in Graduate School at Princeton—her family had bought them a house down there, but Pokey still commuted by plane to Ithaca and was still planning to be a vet. Anyway, Astronomy and Zoology were different—not so dry, more descriptive; Botany too. Next to the Physics and Chem majors in dreariness came the language majors; Libby had narrowly escaped that fate. They were all going to be French or Spanish teachers in the high school back home and had names like Miss Peltier and Miss La Gasa. Polly had her followers among them too, who were even invited up to stay in Stockbridge, to talk French with Mr. Andrews. Polly was a democrat (all the Andrews voted for Roosevelt, being related to the Delanos), though Lakey used to say that the democracy was all on the surface and that underneath Polly was a feudal snob.
Be that as it might, Libby saw Polly as often as she could and almost always asked her to her parties. The trouble was, Polly, though wonderful company when you were alone with her, did not shine at big gatherings. Her voice was very low, like her father’s, who virtually whispered his mild remarks. If you did not explain her family background (a nest of gentlefolk with a few bats in the belfry; Mr. Andrews’ sisters had all been painted by Sargent), people were inclined to overlook her or ask after she had gone home who that quiet blond girl was. That was another thing; she always left early unless you gave her something to do, like talking to a bore, to make her feel useful. All you had to do was tell her to go rescue some stick who was standing in a corner, and Polly would engage him in animated conversation and find out all sorts of wondrous things about him that nobody had ever suspected. But if you told her someone was a great catch, she would not make the slightest effort—“I’m afraid I must make my excuses, Libby” (all the Andrews talked like that).
But the minute you started a game, be it poker or “Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” Polly was in her element, delighted to sort chips or cut out pieces of paper or make blindfolds; she was always the court of authority or the umpire—the person who decided the rules and kept everybody in order. That was the Andrews family again. Having lost their money and had so much trouble, they kept cheerful by doing charades and playing games. Anybody who stayed with them in that rambling old farmhouse, with its big fireplaces and attics and storerooms, was immediately drafted to be “It” after dinner and hastily told all the rules, and woe to him or her who was not quick to catch on. Some nights they did charades, very complicated ones, in costumes in the barn with kerosene stoves to keep warm. Some nights they played “Murder,” though that made Mr. Andrews very nervous, they discovered, for it seemed he had had violent spells in the hospital and trembled if he had to do the carving at the table on one of his darker days. Some nights they played “Cache-Cache” which was just the French version of good old “Hide and Seek” with slightly different rules that they had learned in their chateau in France. Or “Ghosts,” which the family had renamed “Punkin” because Mr. Andrews sometimes burst into quiet tears or laughed strangely when he missed a question and had to say “I’m one-third of a ghost”; so now instead they said “one-third of a punkin,” after “pumpkin head.” Then they played “Geography,” which Mr. Andrews was a perfect fiend at, having traveled so much and knowing all the Y’s and K’s like Ypres, which he called “Wipers,” and Yezd and Kyoto and Knossos. And a new version of “Ghosts” that they called the “Wily Austrian Diplomat” game (“Are you a wily Austrian diplomat?” “No, I am not Metternich”). Polly’s family, being brainy, liked these guessing games almost best, next to charades, but they played silly ones too, like “I Packed My Grandmother’s Trunk.” And on rainy days there were chess and checkers and parcheesi; the family had had to give up Monopoly (some kind friend had sent them a set), again because of Mr. Andrews, poor lamb, who was always reminded of his investments. When they had to make a joint decision, like where to send young Billy to college or what to have for Christmas dinner, they would solemnly do the “sortes Virgilianae” in full concourse assembled with Mr. Andrews’ old Aeneid; the idea was that the children became voting members of the family when they were able to construe Latin—think of that! Then the children got up treasure hunts, with homemade pincushions and calendars and a single amaryllis bulb for prizes, to take the place of paper chases, because they could not afford riding horses any more—only a few cows and chickens; one winter they had tried a pig. Polly used to hunt and ride sidesaddle, and she still had her riding habit and boots and bowler, which she took with her down to Princeton when Pokey remembered to ask her (Pokey had her own stables and hunted weekends); she had had to let out the coat, because she was a little fatter now than she was at eighteen, but they said she still looked very pretty, with her white skin and pale hair in the full-skirted black riding costume with a stock. Black was Polly’s color.
Weekdays, she dressed very plainly, in an old sweater and plaid skirt and low-heeled shoes. But for parties, like today, she had one good black crepe dress, with a low scalloped neckline and a fringed sash, and she had two wide-brimmed black hats, one for winter and one for summer. The summer one, which she was wearing today, was a lacy straw trimmed with black lace. The crepe of her dress was getting a little rusty (black crepe did that, alas), but it set off her full white neck, fleshy chin, and bosom; she had done her hair low on her neck, in a big knot, which was much more becoming. Harald Petersen said she looked like a Renoir. But Libby thought a Mary Cassatt. Libby herself was in high-necked brown taffeta (brown was her color) with topaz earrings to bring out the gold lights in her hair and eyes. She thought Polly, who did not have any good jewelry left, might have worn a white rose in her corsage.
Libby had balanced her guests carefully: a little bit of Vassar, a little bit of publishing, Sister and her husband, who were just back from Europe, a little bit of Wall Street, a little bit of the stage, a lady author, a man from the Herald Tribune, a woman from the Metropolitan Museum. E cosí via; she had not asked anybody from the office, because it was not that kind of party. A rather mixed bag, Sister commented, narrowing her amethyst eyes, but Sister had always been critical of Libby’s aspirations. “Noah’s Ark, eh?” chuckled Sister’s husband. “Bring on your menagerie, Lib!” He never failed to tease her about leading “the literary life.” Libby usually played up to this, but today she had other fish to fry. She wanted Sister and her husband to impress her latest flame. His name was Nils Aslund; she had met him this winter on the ski train. He was the ski jumper at Altman’s and a genuine Norwegian baron! Her brother-in-law, who was getting too fat, nearly choked on a gob of Mr. Andrews’ pâté, when Nils came in, wearing the most beautiful Oxford-gray suit, and bent to kiss Sister’s hand—you only did that with married women, Nils had explained to her. He had the most heavenly manners and a marvelous figure and danced divinely. Even Sister had to admit he was pretty snazzy, after talking to him for a while. His English was almost perfect, with just the trace of an accent; he had studied English literature at the University, and imagine, before he knew Libby, he had read her poem in Harper’s and remembered it. They had the same interests; Libby was almost certain he was going to propose, which was partly why she had decided to have this party. She wanted him to see her in her setting; hence the dogwood, girls. She had never let him come up to the apartment before; you never knew, with Europeans, what they might assume. But at a party, with some of her family present, that was different. Afterward, he was going to take her to dinner, and that was where, she expected, if all went well, he was going to pop the question. Her brother-in-law must have smelled a rat too. “Well, Lib,” he said, “is he gainfully employed?” Libby told him that he was in charge of the ski run at Altman’s; he had come to America to study business. “Seems a funny place to start,” said her brother-in-law, thoughtfully. “Why not the Street?” He chuckled. “You certainly can pick ’em. But seriously, Lib, that rates him socially about on a par with a golf pro.” Libby bit her lip. She had been afraid of this reaction from her family. But she mastered her vexation and disappointment; if she accepted Nils, she decided, she could make it a condition that he find some other work. Perhaps they could open a ski lodge in the Berkshires; another Vassar girl and her husband had done that. And still another couple had a ranch out West. It was just a question of waiting till his father died, when he would go home and run the ancestral estate. …
With all this on her mind, it was no wonder that Libby, at the height of her party, forgot to keep an eye on Polly and see that she was circulating. When things calmed down a bit, what was her amazement to discover her deep in conversation with Gus LeRoy, who had said, when he arrived, that he could only stay a minute. Libby never did find out who had introduced them. They were standing by the window, looking at Libby’s lovebirds. Polly was feeding them bits of strawberry from her glass (the poor birds would be tight as ticks on Liebfraumilch), and Gus LeRoy was talking to her a mile a minute. Libby nudged Kay. Polly’s blue-white breasts were rather in evidence, which was probably the source of the attraction, and her strawy hair, which had a tendency to be untidy, it was so fine, was slipping a little from its pins in the back, at the nape of her neck.
Libby started to tell Kay Gus LeRoy’s history. Her baron was hovering nearby, and she signaled to him to join them. “We’re prophesying a romance,” she explained. Gus came from Fall River, where his family had a printing business. He and his wife were separated, and there was one child, about two and a half years old, Augustus LeRoy IV. The wife taught at a progressive school and was a Communist party member; she was having an affair with somebody in her cell—that was why Gus had left her. Up to now, he had been pretty pink himself but never a party member, and he had brought several important authors who were Communist sympathizers to the firm, but now the Communists were turning a cold shoulder on him because he wanted to divorce his wife and name this other man, which they called a “splitting tactic” or something. “Nils is a Social Democrat,” she added, smiling. “No, no,” said the baron. “As a student, I was. Now I am neutral. Not neuter.” He gave his jolly, boyish laugh and looked sidelong at Libby. The reason Libby had heard all this, she continued, flashing a reproachful look at Nils, was that there was an open Communist right in her office—a very homely girl, built like a truck, with nothing to do but drink by herself in the evenings or go to Party meetings. This girl or woman (she must be almost thirty) knew Gus LeRoy’s wife. “Oh well, homely women!” said the baron, making a disdainful face. “For them it’s like the church.” Libby hesitated. The story that popped into her mind was a bit off color, but it would point a moral to Nils. “I beg to differ, dear sir. You should hear the horrible thing that happened to this girl the other night. Quite another pair of gloves from the Girls Friendly Society or the Altar Guild of St. Paul’s. I had to take over this girl’s work for her till they let her out of the hospital. Four teeth knocked out and a fractured jaw. That was what she got for being a Communist.” “Picketing,” cried Kay. “Did you hear that Harald led a picket march the other day?” Libby shook her head. “Quite another pair of gloves,” she repeated. “This girl—I won’t tell you her name—being a Communist, is very sympathetic to the workingman. Point two: she drinks. You should smell her breath some mornings. Well, one night—actually it was over a month ago; you remember that cold spell we had late in March?—well, she was coming home in a taxi, having had one too many in a bar somewhere, and she started talking to the taxi driver and commiserating with him about his lot, naturally, and they both mentioned how cold it was. She noticed—anyway, that’s how she told the story—that he didn’t have an overcoat or extra jacket on. So, as one comrade to another, she asked him up for a drink, to get warm.” Kay caught her breath; Libby nodded. Several other guests drew near to listen; Libby had quite a reputation as a storyteller. “Maybe she thought being so homely was some protection,” she pursued. “But he had other ideas. And he assumed she did too. So when he had had the drink, he made overtures. She was very startled and pushed him away. The next thing she knew, she came to on her floor, in a pool of blood, with her teeth all over the place and her jaw broken. He was gone, of course.” “Did—?” “No,” said Libby. “Apparently not. And nothing was stolen. Her purse was lying right beside her on the floor. My boss wanted her to go to the police. So did the hospital. They had to wire her jaw together, and it will take her years to pay for the dental work. But she wouldn’t do a thing about it. It’s against Communist principles, it seems, to call the police against a ‘worker.’ And she said, between her clamped jaws, that it was her own fault.” “Quite right,” said Nils firmly. “She was in the wrong.” “Oh, I don’t agree at all,” cried Kay. “If every time someone misunderstood you, they had a right to knock your teeth out …? Or if every time you tried to be nice, it was taken the wrong way?” “Girls should not try to be nice to taxi drivers,” said Nils. “Old Europe speaking,” retorted Kay. “I’m always nice to taxi drivers. And nothing has ever happened.” “Really? Never?” said Sister, looking rather pityingly at Kay. “Well, actually,” said Kay, “once one did try to get into the back of the cab with me.” “Heavens!” said Libby. “What did you do?” “I talked him out of it,” said Kay. The baron laughed heartily; he had evidently caught on to the fact that Kay was an inveterate arguer. “But, Kay, my child, what had you done to encourage him?” said Libby. “Absolutely nothing,” said Kay. “We were talking, and all of a sudden he said I was beautiful and that he liked the perfume I was wearing. And he stopped the cab and got out.” “He had good taste. Don’t you think so, Elizabeth?” Nils spoke of Kay, but he looked deeply into Libby’s eyes with his bright burning blue ones till her knees nearly knocked together.
After that, discussion was general. Kay wanted to tell about Harald’s picketing. “His picture was in the tabloids,” she declared. Libby sighed, because of Sister and her husband. But the story, it turned out, was fascinating—not the usual kind of thing at all. It seemed that Harald had been directing a play for a left-wing group downtown. It was one of those profit-sharing things, co-operatives, but run really by Communists behind the scenes, as Harald found out in due course. The play was about labor, and the audiences were mostly theatre parties got up by the trade unions. “So when Harald found out that these Communists in the management were cooking the books, he organized the actors and threw a picket line around the theatre.” The man from the Herald Tribune scratched his jaw. “I remember that,” he said, looking curiously at Harald. “Your paper played the story down,” said Kay. “So did the Times.” “Because of advertising?” suggested the lady author. Harald shook his head and shrugged. “Go on, if you must,” he said to Kay. “Well, the audience couldn’t cross a picket line, obviously, even if most of the actors hadn’t been in it. So the management had to agree right then and there to show its books every week to a committee of the actors, which Harald is head of. Then they all marched into the theatre.” “And the show went on!” concluded Harald, with an ironical flourish of his hand. “So you won,” said Nils. “Very interesting.” In practice, Kay said, the actors were still only getting $40 Equity minimum, because the show was not doing too well. “But in principle,” Harald said dryly, “‘’twas a famous victory.’” His skeletal face looked sad.
He was not drinking, Libby noted; perhaps he had promised Kay. His own play, poor man, had not been done after all, because the producer’s wife had suddenly sued for divorce, just as they were casting, and withdrawn her money; a lawsuit was going on, which Harald’s play was somehow tied up in. Harald had never been a special favorite of Libby’s. They said that he was constantly sleeping with other women, and that Kay either did not know about it or did not mind, she was still so dominated by him intellectually. But he had thoroughly charmed Nils today, talking a little bit of Norwegian to him and reciting a few lines of Peer Gynt (you pronounced it “Per Gunt”), in which Nils had joined. “A delightful fellow, Petersen,” Nils said to Libby. “You have such charming friends.” And even Sister remarked that he was an ugly-attractive man.
All this time, Polly and Gus LeRoy had been standing by the window, paying no attention to the conversation. Their wine glasses were empty. Polly was very temperate because of the alcoholism in her family (one of her uncles had ridden a horse, while drinking, into the Copley Plaza in Boston), but usually she made an exception for wine and for odd liqueurs like Goldwasser and the one that had a tree growing in the bottle. Libby floated up to them and took their glasses to refill. “I think he’s asking her to dinner,” she reported to Kay. “And mark my words, she’ll refuse. She’ll find some bizarre reason for having to go home.”
Sure enough, before long, Polly was “making her excuses” and wondering if she could have a little of the bowle to take home with her to that Mr. Schneider. Libby threw up her hands. “Why?” she wanted to know. “He can perfectly well go around the corner to Luchow’s if he wants a glass of May wine. Why do you have to bring it to him?” Polly colored. “I’m afraid it was my idea. I told him about your bowle when I brought the woodruff home. And he and Mr. Scherbatyeff had a violent nationalistic argument about what to put in white-wine punches. Mr. Scherbatyeff”—she gave her quick humorous smile—“favors cucumber rind. Anyway, I offered to bring them home a sample of yours. If you can spare it, Libby.” Libby glanced at the punch bowl, calculating; it was still a third full, and the guests were thinning out. “It won’t be good tomorrow,” put in Kay, tactlessly. “The strawberries will go bad. Unless you strain it. …” “If you have a cream bottle I can take it in,” persisted Polly, “or an old mayonnaise jar.” Libby bit her lips. Unlike Polly, she had no patience with the kind of German refugee who was homesick for the old country and the “good old German ways.” She and Polly had argued about this before, and Polly said it was their country, Libby, but Libby said they would have to adapt to America. And, frankly, she thought it was a bit unseemly for a German Jew to be such a supporter of German products; why, there were people who believed that even we Americans should boycott Nazi goods. She would probably be criticized herself for having served Liebfraumilch at her party. Gus LeRoy, she noticed, had got his hat and was standing there—waiting to say good-bye to her, she supposed.
She was afraid her irritation showed. “Here,” she felt like saying, “Polly has a chance to go out to dinner with you at some nice place, and instead she’s going home to those lodgers, because of a silly promise she made! Isn’t that perverse?” Besides, no man, not even a parlor pink, liked a girl who carried things around in old cream bottles stuffed into paper bags. Libby turned to Polly. “You can’t take it home on the bus. It’ll spill.” Gus LeRoy stepped forward. “I’m taking her in a taxi, Miss MacAusland.”
Libby fanned herself. “Come into the kitchen,” she said to Polly. She had to talk to her alone. “Now, Polly,” she said, “I don’t mind giving you the bowle. After all, you got the woodruff for me. But don’t, please don’t, take Gus into that place of yours and introduce him to all those weird characters. For my sake, if not for your own, don’t.” What Libby meant was that the quaint life of Polly’s rooming house was all very well to dilate on to other girls, when you were having a bite alone, but a man would think, to hear about it, still more to see it in the flesh, that you were desperate for company if you had to fall back on that. A man, any man, wanted to imagine that you were courted by all sorts of glamorous rivals. …Libby frowned. No, that was not exactly her thought. What was it about those roomers, about the brownstone house itself, the very carpet on the stairs, Polly’s little tray of gold-speckled liqueur glasses with the worn gold rims, Mr. Scherbatyeff’s smoking jacket, that Libby’s feminine instinct told her would cook a girl’s goose with any normal member of the opposite sex? As though a visit to that house would betray something horribly personal, like a smell, about Polly. The smell of poverty? But Gus LeRoy might like that. No; the smell of having seen better days. That was it. That was what they all—the house, the lodgers, and Polly herself, alas—had in common. Having seen better days and not making those crucial distinctions any more, not having any real ambition. Hoarding a few sepulchral joys, like the pomander balls Polly made for Christmas presents—oranges stuck with cloves and rolled in orrisroot and tied with ribbons to hang in your closet or perfume your drawers. Actually, those pomander balls were quite snazzy; they were a very original present and cost practically nothing. Libby had written down the receipt in her Florentine-leather receipt book, and she was going to get Polly to help her make some herself for next Christmas. But somehow it would be all right for Libby to do it, whereas for Polly …? It would even be all right, strangely enough, for Libby to live in that rooming house, not that she would; she could say she was gathering material for a story. …
“I wasn’t planning to, Libby,” answered Polly, rather stiffly. “Anyway, let’s forget about the bowle. Please.” “Now don’t be trying,” said Libby. “Here, Ida,” she called to the maid, “get Miss Andrews that little glass cocktail shaker. Go and fill it from the punch bowl, and make sure it’s clean, please. Perhaps Miss Andrews would like some of the pâté too. You’re sure?”—she turned swiftly to Polly. “Now what are you going to do? He’s going to drive you to your door. …” By dint of close questioning, Libby established that Polly intended to leave the bowle at her house and then she and Gus LeRoy were going to have dinner at that famous Yiddish restaurant right around the corner from Polly’s—the Café Royal, where all the stars from the Yiddish Theatre went and the journalists from the Jewish newspapers. “Whose idea was that? His?” “Mine, I’m afraid,” said Polly. “It’s not the quietest place.” “Nonsense,” said Libby. “It’s just the thing. Pluperfect.” She thought it clever of Polly, since Gus was so hard to talk to, to pick out a place where you could just look at the other patrons and not try to make yourself heard. She herself had been in transports when Polly took her there one night, frankly turning around and rubbernecking and getting Polly to tell her who the celebrities were (every one of them was a “name” to his co-religionists, which showed you the emptiness of fame) and uttering cries of delight when the food came, till Polly told her to stop, claiming that it would hurt their feelings to be looked at as curiosities, when anyone could see that that was why they came here—to show off. “No, it’s perfect,” she said thoughtfully, putting her index finger to her cheek. “Now what are you going to have to eat? That wonderful scarlet bortsch we had, with the boiled potato popped into it …?” “I haven’t thought, Libby,” said Polly, taking the cocktail shaker, filled, from the maid. “No, no,” said Libby. “Ida will wrap it up for you. You just go to my dressing table and straighten your hair a bit.” She lightly pushed some of Polly’s silvery hairpins back into the knot at the nape of her full neck and then stood back so that she could examine her profile: Polly was going to have to watch her chin line. “Help yourself to some of the perfume in my atomizer.” As Polly was leaving, with Gus LeRoy behind her awkwardly fingering his mustache and then leaping forward to settle Aunt Julia’s old silver-fox tippet over her almost bare shoulders, Libby stepped in and extracted Polly’s promise to bring back the cocktail shaker tomorrow evening, because Libby might be needing it; that way, Libby would be able to hear the postmortem.
Kay and Harald said good-bye; they were going to have a hamburger before the performance. Harald went every night, to check on the house and see that the actors were still playing their parts as he had directed them. Kay sometimes went with him and sat in one of the actors’ dressing rooms. “She snorts like an old war horse,” explained Libby, “at the smell of the grease paint. You can’t keep her out of the greenroom. At college, she was a director.” There was one of those silences that come toward the end of a party. A few guests still lingered, not realizing, obviously, that Libby had a dinner date with Nils. “Oh, don’t go yet,” she urged the woman from the Metropolitan, who obediently sat down again; Libby hated the feeling of a room emptying too quickly, as though everyone were afraid of being the last to leave. It was still light out, a perfect May evening. The greenish-white dogwood grew paler in the shadowed corner; the tall Rhine wine bottles glimmered green and gold on the damask-covered punch table; there was a smell of strawberries and lilies of the valley in the room—Nils had brought her a little bunch. Ida was ready to go, with her black satchel; Libby paid her off and in a fit of spring madness told her to take the rest of the pâté home. “You are generous,” said Nils. “With your maid and your friend. The Liebfraumilch girl.” So he too had noticed Polly’s display of bosom. Libby laughed uncertainly. The way he had said “generous” made her slightly uneasy. The Metropolitan Museum woman leaned forward. “Speaking of Liebfraumilch, do any of you recall that amusing Tintoretto in the National Gallery? ‘The Milky Way’? Such an unusual conceit.” Everyone looked blank. “When will we be alone?” Nils murmured into Libby’s ear.
This happened sooner than Libby had anticipated. All at once, the other guests, seeing him whisper to her, got up and left. One minute they were there, and the next they were gone. He turned to her. “I’ll get my wrap,” she said quickly. But he seized her hand. “Not yet, Elizabeth. Why do you let them call you that horrible nickname?” “You don’t like it?” “I like Elizabeth,” he answered. “I like her very much. Too much.” He pulled her to him and bent back her head and kissed her. Libby responded; she had dreamed of this moment so often that she knew just how it should be—her head falling back, like a chalice, to receive his lips, her nostrils contracting, her eyes shut. Nils’s lips were soft and warm, contrary to her imaginings, for she always thought of him in a ski sweater, fair and ice-cold, his blond hair windswept under the peak of his cap. The thin skin of his face was very tight-drawn, over reddened high cheek-bones, and she would have supposed, with all that outdoor life, that his lips would be hard and taut. He brushed his mouth back and forth gently over hers. Then he tilted her chin, looked into her eyes and kissed her passionately, taking her breath away. Libby staggered back a little and released herself. “Elizabeth!” he said, and again he pulled her to him and kissed her very gently, murmuring her name. In a minute—or hours, she could not really tell—she could feel his large teeth pressing hard against her closed mouth. She broke away, staggering back a second time. She tried to laugh. “Quiet,” he said. She pulled the chain of the big brass table lamp, for it was getting dark, and leaned against the table, supporting herself with the palm of one hand while with the other she nervously pushed back her hair. He came and stood beside her, encircling her shoulders with his arm, so that she could rest against him, her forehead brushing his cheek; he was four inches, she reckoned, taller than she was—a perfect difference. Standing like that, at rest, Libby felt utterly comfy; time slipped by. Then he slowly turned her to him, and, before she knew it, he had his tongue in her mouth and was pushing it against hers. His tongue was very firm and pointed. “Give me your tongue, Elizabeth. Give me a tongue kiss.” Slowly and reluctantly, she raised the tip of her tongue and let it touch his; a quiver of fire darted through her. Their tongues played together in her mouth; he tried to draw hers, sucking, into his mouth, but she would not let him. A warning bell told her they had gone far enough. This time he let go of his own accord; she smiled glassily. “We must go,” she said. He ran his beautifully manicured hand up and down her arm in its long tight taffeta sleeve. “Beautiful Elizabeth. Lovely rippling muscles. You’re a strong girl, aren’t you? A strong passionate girl.” Libby felt so flattered that she allowed him to kiss her some more.
Then he went and pulled down the blinds and led Libby toward the sofa. “Come, Elizabeth,” he said disarmingly, “let’s read some poems together and drink some wine.” Libby could not resist this; she let him take the Oxford Book from her poetry shelf and pour them two brimming glasses of Liebfraumilch from a fresh bottle, which he uncorked. He came and sat beside her on the sofa. “Skoal,” he said. “Rhine maiden!” Libby giggled. “Shakespeare,” she said unexpectedly, “died of an overdose of Rhenish wine and pickled herring.” Nils looked through the book, frowning; Libby’s favorite lines were underscored, and the margins were peppered with exclamation points and question marks. “Ah, here it is!” he cried. And he began to read aloud “The Passionate Shepherd to His Love”: “‘Come live with me and be my Love,/ And we will all the pleasures prove. …’” Et cetera; Libby felt a tiny bit embarrassed; that poem was such a chestnut—she had known it by heart since she was sixteen. When he had finished, he leaned over and kissed her hungrily. “Oh, but I wager you don’t know the answer, sir,” she said laughing and extricating herself. “‘The Shepherdess Replies.’ Sir Walter Raleigh.” And she began to recite from memory. “‘If all the world and love were young,/ And truth in every shepherd’s tongue …/ Then these delights my mind might move/ To live with thee and be thy Love.’” Her voice faltered as he gazed at her. “…‘Thy coral clasps and amber studs…’” How did it go? The upshot was that Raleigh, speaking for the shepherdess, refused the shepherd’s kind invitation. “Give me the book,” she begged. Nils demanded another kiss in payment—a longer one. She was limp when he let her have the book. His hand stroked her hair as she thumbed through the index, looking for Raleigh; the pages, irritatingly, stuck together. She tried to ignore his hand, which had reached the back of her neck and was toying with the collar, and concentrate on finding the poem. All at once, she heard one of the snaps at the back of her dress open.
At that faint sound, all Libby’s faculties stood alert; her spine stiffened. Her eyes goggled. Her Adam’s apple moved as she swallowed. She realized he was planning to seduce her. The book fell open of its own accord on her lap. This must be the Continental approach. Those barons and counts used maneuvers so obvious that you would not think they would try them. Oh, poor Nils, how he was dropping in her estimation. If he only knew how old-fashioned he seemed! Another snap surreptitiously opened. Libby could not decide whether to laugh or be angry. How to show him his mistake, without hurting his feelings, so that they could still go out to dinner? Her senses had stopped fluttering, like a clock ceasing to tick; her blood was perfectly mute. As if he were aware of the change in the temperature, he turned her head to him and stared into her eyes. Libby swallowed again. When he drew her to him and kissed her, she kept her teeth gritted. That ought to give him the hint. “Ice Maiden,” he said, reproachfully. “That’s enough, Nils,” she said, trying to sound more friendly than she felt. She plunked her feet firmly on the floor, closed the book, and started to get up. But suddenly he had her in a vise of iron and bore her backward on the sofa. “Kiss me,” he said roughly. “No, not that way. Give me your tongue.” Libby thought it wiser to comply. He was frighteningly strong; she remembered with horror having heard that athletes had uncontrollable sex urges and something, too, about Scandinavians being the most ferocious Don Juans. Who had said that—Kay? This kiss actually hurt her; he was biting her lips. “Please, Nils!” she cried, opening her eyes wide, to see his eyes staring at her like two blue pinpoints and his lips drawn back across his teeth like a wild animal about to charge. He had changed into a totally different person, very cruel-looking. Libby would have been fascinated if she had not been so scared. He was holding her down with his body, while his hands sought to caress her. The more she wriggled, the more determined he got. As she struggled, the snaps opened at the back of her dress; a hook tore loose from her brassiere. Then she heard a fearful sound of ripping material—her brand-new dress bought at Bendel’s spring sale! With one hand, he tore the bodice open, clear away from the sleeve, which remained dangling on her arm; with the other, he held her pinned down by her wrist, which he twisted when she tried to move. He buried his head in her neck and started pulling at her skirt.
Libby was moaning with terror. She considered screaming for help, but she had never spoken to the people in the other apartments, and she could not bear to be found by strangers in her torn clothes and general disarray. Dimly she thought of Polly and those lodgers, who would have rescued Polly in a second if anybody had attempted anything. She wondered if she could faint, but what might not happen while she was unconscious? The doctors at Vassar used to say that a woman could not be forced against her will. They advised girls to kick a man in his testicles or jab him there with your knee. When she started to try that, aiming with her knee at what she hoped was the right place, Nils gave a crowning laugh and slapped her lightly across the face. “Bad girl.” The transformation of Nils was the most painful aspect.
“Are you a virgin?” he said suddenly, stopping right in the middle of his fell design. Libby nodded speechlessly. Her only hope, she now felt, was to throw herself on his mercies. “Oh, what a bore!” he said, half relaxing his hold. “What a bore you are, Elizabeth!” He grimaced. “Libby, I should say.” With a shake, he disengaged himself. Libby had never been so hurt in her whole life. She lay there, gulping, in her ruined dress, looking piteously up at him out of her big, brown affrighted eyes. He pulled her skirt down roughly over her glove-silk bloomers. “It would not even be amusing to rape you,” he said. And with that he rose from her sofa and calmly went into her bathroom. Libby was left alone with the Oxford Book of English Verse. She could hear him go to the toilet without even running the water or shutting the door. Then, whistling, he let himself out of her apartment. She heard the latch click and his step on the stairs, and that was that.
Libby tottered to her feet and headed straight for the mirror. She looked like the Wreck of the Hesperus. Moreover, she was hungry; he had not even waited till after dinner. And she had let Ida take the pâté. “‘You are generous,’” she said to herself in the mirror. “‘Beautiful Elizabeth.’” Her feelings were in the strangest turmoil. Nils, of course, could not have meant that she was a bore; he had to vent his chagrin at finding out that she was a virgin. His code as an aristocrat had made him stop then. It was the code that was a bore to him. He wanted to rape her and go berserk like the old Vikings. At least that would have been something dramatic and conclusive. She would have lost her honor. But she would have found out what it was like when a man did it to you. Libby had a little secret; she sometimes made love to herself, on the bath mat, after having her tub. She always felt awful afterward, sort of shaken and depleted and wondering what people would think if they could see her, especially when she took herself what she called “Over the Top.” She stared at her pale face in the mirror, asking herself whether Nils could have guessed: was that what made him think she was experienced? They said it gave you circles under your eyes. “No,” she said to herself, shuddering. “No.” Perish the thought. Nobody could guess. And no one would ever guess the shaming, sickening, beastly thing that had happened, or failed to happen, this evening. Nils would not tell. Or would he?