O THE BOOK!” SAID PHIL BARROW, lifting his cocktail, third gin, third vermouth, third cold tea and a dash of bitters shaken up and if you-have-any-cucumber-in-the-refrigerator-I-usually-soak-it-peeled-of-course-in-the-cold-tea-say-for-half-an-hour—“To the book!”
“To the book!” said Corinne, lifting hers, and staring defiantly at Dennis don’t-you-dare-make-a-face-when-you-taste-this don’t-you-dare-say-what-is-this-mess—don’t-you-dare.
“Thanks,” said Dennis and politely drank it down. “It’s mighty nice of you people to celebrate for me this way. Say, that’s a fine drink you’ve made here, Phil, how did you tell me you made it?”
Corinne rewarded him with a grateful smile because it was no fair hurting Phil, it was strange but she simply could not bear for Phil to be hurt in any of his little vanities, whereas she was almost vengefully pleased when shafts were tossed in Dennis’s direction. But no one must tease Phil about his recipes or his anecdotes or his pleasure in his own good sense, no one must make a fool of him, no one, that is, except his little wife.
“I use cold tea as the basis for all my cocktails,” said Phil, eyes behind his spectacles faintly contemptuous of his guest’s ability to appreciate nuances of taste. “Iced tea and applejack, for instance, makes a darned fine highball, or a good punch base for the matter of that.”
“Dennis can’t make a decent cocktail to save his soul,” said Corinne proudly, and turned to Dennis—now you, now you say something.
“It’s the truth. Nor a salad nor a soufflé nor a gingerbread man. It’s mortifying,” agreed Dennis readily. The evening was on. Now we all join hands to build up Phil. What-a-cook—what-a-swimmer—what-a-financier—what-a-thinker—what-a-man-Phil!
“Let me give you another,” suggested Phil. “Pass his glass, Baby.”
“Here you are, Baby,” said Dennis maliciously, and passed his glass to Corinne. She kicked him under the table. Over the centerpiece of African tulips—lecherous-looking posies for a family dinner, he thought—he caught Olive’s significant, sarcastic half-smile. He wondered what would happen if one of these days he would shout out his hate for Olive, his hate for all women’s girlfriends. Must every woman in the world have some other woman best friend, always hovering in the background, voicing wisdom very bad for the sweetheart’s naïve ears, advising, reporting, knowing, always knowing so much more than the sweetheart herself? Olive, dear loyal Olive! If women were only as deceitful to their female friends as men hoped and said they were! But no, wherever a man went he must be annoyed and frustrated by sex solidarity. Olive, for instance, knew all about Dennis because Olive and Corinne had gone to Miss Roman’s together. Corinne always told Olive absolutely everything and Olive told Corinne everything, especially little things she’d heard here and there about Dennis, odd places she’d run into him. Olive was an old peach, that way. Every time he saw Olive’s smooth, rather handsome dark face across the table he thought of how much Olive knew about him and he shuddered, how much more she knew about Corinne, too, than he did. She probably knew of plenty little escapades Corinne had confessed only to her, little infidelities that made a stalwart true lover like Dennis seem a rather ridiculously romantic figure. Olive knew all, she knew—no use pretending she didn’t—exactly how Dennis made love, how he first did this, then he did that, how he looked in his BVDs, his every weakness. Infinitely more detached than Corinne she could weigh the evidence coolly, check this against that, and balance all with her own sour philosophy. Dennis, as seen through the eyes of the girlfriend’s girlfriend, could be Romeo only to some feeble-minded Juliet, not to shrewd Miss Olive Baker. He could see himself reflected in her clear dark eyes, very, very diminutive and extremely upside down, and in her quiet smile he read how decent she was in not telling Phil, in comforting Corinne in minor crises, in never revealing to a living soul except by a slight sneer what a two-timing Casanova she happened to know Dennis really was. Ah there, decent square-shooting girlfriend’s girlfriend, he saluted her silently across the table, what was your private opinion of that last lovers’ quarrel you’ve just been hearing about upstairs, and didn’t you think the little episode concerning my new azure-blue shorts was enormously entertaining, and how did you explain my kissing Corinne right smacko in the Snack Bar—kinda sweet and spontaneous of me, wasn’t it? … One thing to count on, old chummy, you won’t ever quite dare crack down hard on me because I know such wonderful people and you’re crazy to meet them, because you never yet have met anybody except the people the Barrows pass on to you and they’re not hot enough. How long has it been now since I promised we’d get hold of Okie-Dokie, the big editor, and have a party, just the four of us? Ever since that promise Olive had read Okie’s magazine from cover to cover with curious loyalty to this future friend. She’d cut out a picture of him in a tabloid paper where he was one of five men asked a question by the Inquiring Reporter, and she always referred to Okie with a positively possessive smirk. Dennis could not imagine why he’d never brought about this meeting or come through with some elegant party, but having it always in the air, the brilliant unknown Okie always hovering in the background gave him a certain hold over Olive, much more than if he had ever produced the too-too-average Okie of reality. Honestly, though, Corinne protested time after time to him, Olive did think a great deal of Dennis, she certainly admired his courage sticking to his writing after that bad review of his last book in Time, for most people, Olive felt, would have given up after that, and she did think in certain lights he had sort of a sweet profile. Dennis knew all this because Corinne had often told him so, just as she had told Olive how much Dennis liked her and how he couldn’t understand why a girl with her personality had so many free evenings.
In taxis going home from the little dinners at the Barrows’, Dennis and Olive would be alone, silent, detesting each other, he trying to remember his sweet profile, she striving to sharpen up on her personality. There were bad hours indeed, these rides through the night in love-scented taxis. Once Dennis had had a horrible temptation to make a grab at her virgin thighs just to see her triumphant smile—aha! didn’t-I-say-that’s-the-way-he-was-Corinne—just to see what she would report later to Corinne. But the fear that he would only have her calling him up every morning instead of loyally tattling all to Corinne, kept him from this experiment in female-friend psychology.
“How about it, Orphen, does MacTweed think this book will go at all? What does MacTweed say about it anyway?” inquired Phil, arm-and-arming it with MacTweed, two big businessmen sticking together against their wives’ artist friends. The closest Phil could ever get to Dennis’s work was an interest in MacTweed’s overhead. Dennis warily tried to duck this snag familiar in his talks with Phil. If he commented unfavorably on MacTweed, Phil would at once patiently explain to Author Orphen what MacTweed, a brother financier, was driving at. He would smile patronizingly at Goodfornothing Author Orphen while he interpreted the farseeing wisdom of MacTweed to Corinne and Olive, as if, Dennis thought resentfully, he was his personal friend, a pal, a buddy, instead of being a stranger known only through Dennis’s descriptions. Naturally Phil felt warm toward any unknown party who was kind enough to get in Dennis’s hair, that was only to be expected, but he needn’t take this Olympian bow every time the Big Interests were mentioned.
“Corinne read some of the book, Phil,” said Olive, the fixer. “She says it’s quite interesting and it may catch on.”
“Is that so, Baby? You read it, did you?” Phil deferred eagerly to Baby’s intellect, as if her having read it showed far more brilliance than merely having written it. “Interesting you say, hey? You know, Orphen, Corinne reads everything, whatever the reviews suggest. She saves those little lists of different authors’ favorite books in the Tribune and goes through every one.”
She does? She does?
“I trust her judgment, too. If she says a thing’s interesting, I take her word for it, don’t I, Baby? Another thing, she’s saying, oh dear, she says, I certainly wish Dennis could write something that would make money like So Red the Rose or those things.”
She does? She does?
“Hm,” said Dennis, very red, very angry, glaring across the African tulips at this strange Corinne of Mr. Barrow’s, glaring as if she did not look unusually sweet in her simple little yellow dinner dress, ruffles modestly falling over pretty arms, friendship bracelet, of all things, jingling silver hearts over her wrists.
“I think it’s really good,” she said, unconscious of this baleful scrutiny. “You know, Baby, I think there’s a picture in it. It would suit Ann Harding.”
“Ann Harding! You don’t say! Well, well, Orphen, congratulations, that’s fine!”
Dennis strove vainly to force Corinne’s attention so she might see his scorn. Baby! So, not only did her husband call her Baby, but she called him Baby, too! You’d think people could think of something fresher than that to call each other, something that would exhibit more flamboyantly their feelings for each other. Why couldn’t they call each other Butch, for instance? Good God, what was he doing here between these Babys! And Olive smirking down at her plate, pleased with the whole nasty situation, something to talk over tomorrow, or, no, by Jove, tonight. After coffee the girls would rush to Corinne’s bathroom and stay in there whispering for hours while he, outsider, stranger, must sit in the living room with Phil and cognac, disliking both, and hear how bright Baby was, what a head, what a brain!
“And if I hadn’t spoiled everything by rushing her off to get married she would have had a career herself!” said Phil, for suddenly there they were, the two of them, in the living room, brandy bottle between them on the glass-and-silver coffee table, girls whispering furiously away in corners upstairs. “She wrote pieces for the school paper and had parts in plays. I’m to blame for keeping her just for myself.”
“I wouldn’t blame myself too much,” said Dennis. All right, now, let’s get on with the buildup. That was the legitimate tax on bachelors; wherever they stole their jam they must build up the rightful owner. Briefly looking back over the last ten years, Dennis could not remember a single husband he had not spoiled for life by his flattery, many of them so set up that they felt they were too good for the very wives Dennis was testing out. “By George, you know how to pick a nice brandy.”
“Marie Brizzard,” said Phil. “More? Sixty-five years. Yes, one thing you can’t economize on is brandy. Either it’s good or it isn’t.”
“Brandy and neckties,” said Dennis, watching the door frantically. Where were the little women anyway? “I never spend less than four-fifty for my ties.”
He fingered his Woolworth tie delicately as if it were something infinitely rare and fragile.
“That’s the truth,” said Phil, looking toward the stairs.
“Oh, Baby! Hey, we’re waiting! Did Corinne tell you I’d just made the University Club? Sort of embarrassing for me in a way as the head of the firm doesn’t belong, so naturally I’m a little on edge as to how he’ll take it. Did Corinne tell you we’re planning a world cruise this year? Poor Baby, she’s had her heart set on it for so long. Her one aim in life.”
Corinne wanted a world cruise?
“That and a mink coat. Well, it’s one or the other, I told her, maybe the mink next year.”
Corinne wanted a mink coat?
“Olive may come along on the cruise—make it more fun for Corinne, another girl, of course. More brandy? No, I just have one myself. Corinne got me a bottle eighty years old for my birthday. Smoothest stuff you ever tasted. By the way, Orphen, does MacTweed pay you a straight royalty or a stated amount? Not much in a book of that type, is there?”
“He pays plenty,” said Dennis mysteriously. “Plenty. Through the nose.”
Phil was impressed but skeptical.
“I’ve been thinking of a cruise myself,” said Dennis dreamily. “Not with a crowd. Just private. On a yacht. Friends of mine. Glaenzers. Anthony Glaenzer—she was the Cody daughter, you know—Stuyvesant Cody, all the other children put away in asylums here and there so she has everything. Yes, we have some fun together, the Glaenzer bunch and I, laughing and kidding back and forth.”
There. Behind Corinne’s back the boys might fight as much as they liked. Nice little Phil could brag and Dennis could lie. Me and the Glaenzers, now what put that in my mouth? …
“What is it girls tell each other that’s so important?” fretted Phil, looking toward the hall door. “Olive’s been here all day and Corinne was with Olive all last night but they still got things to say. Like boarding school.”
Dennis’s eyes narrowed. So she told her husband she’d spent last night with Olive, eh? Well, she’d told Dennis she’d spent it with her husband at Radio City Music Hall. One answer to that—a new lover in the offing. How stupid Phil was not to guess this. Almost irresistible not to prick his smugness with a hint or two, a doubt of Olive planted here right now. Then have Phil on guard, keeping careful watch on these little Olive nights, protecting her from cads, keeping her safe and true for Dennis!
“Did Corinne seem a little upset to you tonight, Orphen? She’s such an emotional little creature. Even a movie upsets her. The other night she saw Jean Harlow in something or other—Reckless—and she cried her eyes out. Terribly sensitive.”
Sure, she cried her eyes out over Jean Harlow, thought Dennis, intensely disliking this man’s wife, this sensitive little Mrs. Barrow who was upstairs giggling over that man last night—could it have been Walter, the teakettle man? … Sure, she cried over Reckless—just a little bundle of emotions. She could see plays or read books on revolution, poverty, and starvation with a detached “Tough luck” as if among the oppressed further misfortune were the rule and left her unmoved. But when she saw hearts really break, as only hearts under ermine can break, then tears by the gallon did she shed, did Mrs. Baby Barrow, her whole exquisite nervous system bathed and sublimated in sympathetic anguish over Harlow’s diamond-studded woe, Harlow gallantly wearing her sables, chin up before the servants, smiling at the cruel Four Hundred, while her brave heart broke in the back seat of a Rolls Royce. That would upset Phil’s Baby, all right, that would be the gamut of her feelings, all passed on later in whispers to Olive.
How can I stand such people, marveled Dennis, how can I do this man the honor of sleeping with his clever, booky little wife? How can I endure them, and say what you will there must be a streak of that fudgy respectability in her to enjoy this man’s company, she must have something like that in her.… I mustn’t have any more of this cognac, he thought, Phil’s face drops an inch every time I pass my glass, but he has to keep on asking because he’s a perfect host if it kills him. Then, too, I might go a little screwy and tell him to make Corinne wear more underclothes while she’s got this cold, and watch out for the little rascal when she says she’s with Olive.… Hello, here we are on our feet, the girls all whispered out back in the room, Olive with lowered eyelids, abulge with secrets Dennis would never, never know.
“Gossiping again, you two!” accused Phil none too merrily. “We’ve been here hours.”
“Why, Baby!” murmured Corinne.
“We were not gossiping,” said Olive, smoothly crossing a very good leg for a girlfriend over a handsome knee. “Phil thinks women don’t have anything to say to each other but gossip. We have ideas, too.”
Ideas! Dennis looked with vast scorn at Mrs. Barrow’s ivory valentine face. Ideas! Why, this creature’s whole nature recoiled when she came smack up against anything as cold and repellent as an idea. A turtle in my bed, she would scream, a cold turtle! A statistic poking its clammy nose into my face! Away! Oh, nasty, nasty Idea!
“We were discussing Captain Anthony Eden, if you must know,” said Olive proudly. “It happens we both admire him.”
“He’s doing a lot for England,” said Mr. Baby.
“For all of us,” said Dennis morosely, “and for Finland too. Captain Eden represents Virtue and Right all over the world, for he represents England.”
“That’s so,” said Phil. “England is England and if any country has high ideals, it’s England.”
“What a nice couple, England and Eden,” said Dennis thoughtfully. “I wonder if they call each other Baby.”
Ah, there the resentment was revealed! Corinne flashed him wounded astonishment—you-are-you’re-making-fun-of-Phil! Olive laughed goody-goody-goody-a-scene-a-showdown. Phil drew back, insulted, then managed a sour smile and lit his cigarette very carefully with his beautiful birthday lighter.
“Very good,” he said. “Excellent.”
It’s very strange, thought Dennis, apparently my insides are as old-fashioned as a White Steamer, no matter how modern my top is. Can it be true that these old insides shudder at something so simple and everyday as a triangle situation, can it be they recoil from an up-to-date Family Dinner? Why, you funny old insides, you, operated by federal instead of local laws, so that all local actions are canceled out by this invisible G-man.
“I’ll say this, my Baby is looking mighty pretty in the new dress this Baby bought her today, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” said Phil.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!” said Olive and Corinne gratefully. Into the doghouse, you go, Orphen.
Phil reached across Corinne’s lap, placed a hand comfortably on her knee. Dennis looked at the ceiling, out the window, up the stairs. He stared so sternly at the walls that it would seem the mortgages must pop out in very shame.
Detestable Babys! Hateful Olive! Horrid House! Raw searing rage seethed through him, a little dinner celebrating his book, a little family dinner, don’t dress, just wear your armor, just a little family dinner. Rage left and he was sad, far worse to be sad, too, to wonder why love today came to people in fragments like a jigsaw puzzle and no one person had all the pieces, nothing whole was left any more, nor was this England’s fault, nor could even Captain Eden fix it up.… This sadness, this ache, jealousy, whatever it might be, must be what Effie Thorne carried always with her, this was what it was like, this was it when she saw Marian, this unbearable tormenting bewilderment. Effie, Effie, he thought, I understand, so this is what stays with you always and no one can help, no one. Only you and I know, we understand.