McMurtry, Larry - Novel 05 (21 page)

 
          
 
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 offish 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 tete-a-tete, 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.

 
          
 
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
Aimee."