The Dud Avocado (5 page)

“And
then
what did you do?” she would ask with real avidity at the end of a dreary, over-long and absolutely pointless anecdote.

“So, then I simply left.”

“But where did you
go?
”

“Back to the dance.”

“And then what?”

“I began dancing.”

“And then what?”

“Why, that’s all.”

“But what did
he
do then?”

“Oh Judy,
please
. That’s all, I said.”

“Oh,” she would sigh, resigning herself to the inevitable, but unable to conceal her disappointment. And this “oh” always escaped with the most heartbreaking, dying fall.

Ridiculous as the idea may have been for her bluestocking mother to send brother and sister over alone like this, the fact was that Judy was protected as much by her curiosity as by her innocence. And then there was this other thing about her, too. You know all that razzle-dazzle about people being born in Original Sin and all that rot? Well, maybe it’s rot and maybe it isn’t. I mean I wouldn’t slit my throat from ear to ear, just because I’d found out for sure that most people
are
. But she wasn’t. That was the thing. She simply
wasn’t
. I’m positive of that.

She was terrifically excited at this moment because she’d just been to see the paintings of a young artist called Jim Breit. He was, she explained to me, one of the Hard Core. The Hard Core was what we called a group of rugged individuals who circled around an old satyr, a sort of archetypal poet-painter nicknamed the Ancient, and made their headquarters in the cafés of
the Dôme, the Rotonde, and, especially, the Select in Mont-parnasse. A rowdy bunch on the whole, they were most of them so violently individualistic as to be practically interchangeable. For instance, there was a pair of identical blue-bereted brown beards, and although each of them had markedly different personalities—one boring and pompous, the other gay and positively skittish—Beard Boring and Beard Bubbly, in fact—I found myself avoiding them both, as I was never sure which was which. The ones who Did Anything (and there were plenty not averse to Taking It Easy—or whatever the course was called at the Sorbonne), mostly painted. That any of them would actually be
talented
had never occurred to me. Another essential difference between Judy and me.

“Which one is Jim?” I asked.

“The rather short one with very blue eyes who has dimples when he smiles.”

“The one who’s so shy and polite?” She nodded. “I’ll be darned. He certainly doesn’t look like a painter, does he? Still that’s probably in his favor. What is he—G.I., Fulbright, Guggenheim, or Rockefeller?”

“I don’t think he has a grant,” she said. “I think he’s just here on his own.”

“That’s original, anyway. What are his paintings like?”

She thought this over for a moment, very seriously. “They’re
good
” she said finally. “I can’t describe them, but, you know,” she said suddenly, “I’d like to
own
one of them.”

That
really
impressed me. “By the way,” I said casually, “I’m going back to the stage. See?” And I held up my book of plays.

“Oh Sally Jay. Are you an actress? Why didn’t you tell me? How exciting. I’ll bet you’re perfectly marvelous. What have you been in on Broadway?”

“Well, nothing, really.” I had to admit that there was only that season in Summer Stock. Then I told her about my meeting Larry that morning, and how he was going to produce some one-act plays here. I had quite a time trying to answer all her and-then-what’s in describing what actually
had
taken place during our encounter. “So anyway,” I finished, pointing at the books, “I’ve got to get through all of these and practically memorize
them by next week. I’m going to be in this damn thing or bust.”

My telephone rang and I jumped a mile. I thought it might be Teddy and I still hadn’t made up my mind quite what to do about him. Should I let him suspect things were not too well by the tone of my voice
now
, for instance, or spring it on him later as a surprise? It seemed a very hard thing even to pick up the receiver. I just didn’t want to answer it.

When I did, it wasn’t Teddy after all. It was the concierge who wanted to know if Miss Galache was there with me. Someone was waiting downstairs to see her.

“Oh heavens,” exclaimed Judy. “It’s Claude—Claude Tonnard. I’d completely forgotten about him. He’s a painter too, but
French
” We both giggled at the absurdity of knowing a Frenchman in France. “We’re going to have coffee at the Select. Please come along. You’ll like him. Honestly. And he doesn’t speak a word of English so he’ll be awfully good for your French, because you’ll probably want to act in French too, won’t you? Oh dear, I forgot all about my pills. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll take them later.”

“Judy, you
must
have them now.”

Judy had some mysterious ailment which she either didn’t know about, or wouldn’t talk about. She was extremely delicate, and she tired easily.

“All right, I’ll run up to my room and get them. But please come to the Select.”

“Nope, Absolutely not. I’ve got
much
too much work to do,” I assured her as she left.

I went to the window and looked out at the September evening. Though still hot with the vanished sun, the dusk, with its suggestion of autumn and nights drawing in, sent shivers of excitement up and down my spine. I thought of sex and sin; of my body and all the men in the world who would never sleep with it. I felt a vague, melancholy sensation running through me, not at all unpleasant. If I could only figure out if it was Larry I was in love with, or just love, then I’d be all set, I told myself. It had certainly seemed to be Larry that morning, especially after that scene at the Dupont, but if I was so sure of it then, why not now? After twenty minutes of this soul-searching, or rather tailchasing,
and after reaching the same conclusion over and over, with the same lack of conviction, I left the window and began pacing around the room. When I felt the horns of my dilemma actually toss me into the air, I lit out of the hotel and landed in the street.

When I got to the Select, I saw that the Hard Core, already assembled, were, as usual, surrounding the Ancient and hanging on to his every obscenity. I picked out Judy’s “good” painter, wedged in between the two Beards, and smiled at him encouragingly, noting as he dimpled back, what a pleasant-looking boy he was. The vague nymphomania I had experienced at the window returned. What an awful lot of possible people there seemed to be around all of a sudden. All on the same day, too. I told myself that this must be part of some pathetic fallacy, whereby if you fall in love with one man,
all
men instantly become desirable, whether they actually are or not. But as soon as I laid eyes on the Frenchman with Judy, I realized how ridiculous this was. I didn’t need any pathetic fallacy to tell me that taken all in all—age, weight, shape and color, this was really le jacque pot! It isn’t often that one sees so pure a type of Ladies’ Man, so distilled an essence of temptation. I imagined every woman for tables around going mad with desire.

Only Judy, plying him with questions about which art gallery would be the best for a young artist to exhibit in, seemed unaffected. What amused me most was the expression of grave respect sitting so awkwardly upon his features, as he listened to her. It’s amazing how right you can sometimes be about a person you don’t know; it’s only the people you do know who confuse you. I had guessed at once that this wasn’t his everyday expression, and sure enough, as I approached, I saw it relax slowly into an entirely different one. Close up he was even more devastating. The eyes, smoldering lazily under their bushy, beetling brows, almost seemed to be lying down, while the magnificent head leaned forward, not
eagerly
exactly, but alertly. My heart raced. If he wasn’t unaware of his power, he certainly wasn’t bored by it either. He looked carefully at me. I-feel-as-if-we-
have
-already-so-why-waste-time? the look stated unequivocally.

Unexpectedly, I felt my interest drop. There was something
about this that rather bored me. Something harrowingly familiar about him. I sat down rather shaken, all sorts of things rattling along the corridors of my mind.

“Mademoiselle Galache is doing me the honor of seeing my paintings tomorrow,” he said in French. “Perhaps you would care to join her, Mademoiselle.…” He turned to Judy. “Excuse me, but I don’t believe I heard your friend’s name.” So we were introduced again. I didn’t blame him. What with all that had been going on between us, I hadn’t been aware of our being introduced either. I mean, how many things can you concentrate on at once anyway?

“Oh Sally Jay, do come. Please,” said Judy.

I sighed. “I’d like to very much, but I’m afraid I can’t. I’ll be too busy.”

“Alors vous prenez du thé chez moi le jour prochain. C’est dimanche,” he said promptly.

I considered. That he meant tea to be just us deux and chez lui, was painfully clear. On the other hand, it was also true that he spoke no English at all, and that, what with one thing and another, would be mighty good for my French. He possessed such ravishing good looks—the stylized good looks of the hero on a French cinema poster, true, but ravishing quand meme. No. I must get off this sex kick, I thought, or I’ll be turning into some sort of maniac. “
Pushover, Gorce. Pushover is the word
” the grinning ghost of Larry snickered in my ear.

Turning to the Frenchman and disciplining myself, I said no, that it wasn’t possible. I said it firmly, and I explained that I had only a very short time in which to study for some roles that I wished to audition.

I could see he wasn’t used to being refused anything and that my refusal had seriously put him off. He looked offended and proud and huffy and at that very moment I was able to put a name to the aura of familiarity enveloping him. The name was Teddy.

For some reason that did it. That absolutely clinched it. If I didn’t even want to be reminded of Teddy, I certainly didn’t want Teddy. That was logic.

“Oh gosh,” I said in English, leaping to my feet. “Just look
at the time. I’ve got to get back. G’by, Judy. G’by—oh— Enchanté, Monsieur.…”

“Tonnard,” he supplied, rising quickly, “Claude Tonnard. Alors une autre fois, je peux espérer? Je peux vous donner un coup de téléphone? Vous habitez ce quartier?”

“Oui, je suis au même hôtel que Mile Galache. Au revoir.” And I fled.

I went back to the hotel and had a bath.

As I lay there, washing myself, the mirror covering the wall around the tub began to steam up. I remembered how I used to count the times I’d been to bed with Teddy on it, keeping score like in a game of bridge: one, two, three, four upright sticks and a diagonal slash for five. And so on.…

I find I always have to write
something
on a steamed mirror. Only this time, I couldn’t think of anything to write.

So I just wrote my own name, over and over again.

A
T ELEVEN O’CLOCK
that night, in one of my dangerous moods—midnight-black, excited and deeply dreading (as opposed to one of my beautiful midnight-blue ones, calm but deeply excited), my nerves strung taut to singing, I arrived alone at the Ritz, only to discover all over again what a difficult thing this was to do. I tended to lose my balance at the exact moment that the doorman opened the cab door and stood by in his respectful attitude of “waiting.” I have even been known to fall out of the cab by reaching and pushing against the handle at the same time that he did. But this time, however, I had disciplined myself to remain quite,
quite
still, sitting on my hands until the door was opened for me. Then, burrowing into my handbag, which suddenly
looked like the Black Hole of Calcutta, to find the fare, I discovered that I needed a light. A light was switched on. I needed more than a light, I needed a match or a flashlight or special glasses, for I simply couldn’t find my change purse, and when I did (lipstick rolling on the floor, compact open and everything spilled—passport, mirror, the works) I couldn’t find the right change. We were now all three of us, driver, doorman and I, waiting to see what I was going to do next. I took out some bills, counted them three times in the dark until I was absolutely certain that I had double the amount necessary, and then pressed it on the driver, eagerly apologizing for overtipping. Overcome with shyness I nodded briefly in the direction of the doorman and raced him to the entrance. I just won. Panting and by now in an absolute ecstasy of panic I flung myself at the revolving doors and let them spin me through. Thus I gained access to the Ritz. I had once seen a man in the taxi in front of mine jump out and with a lordly wave at the doorman say something like, “Pay him for me, Guillaume, my good man,” and stroll inside. I have never arrived there alone since, without devoutly wishing I was sharing that cab.

Inside, confronting the long vista, at the end of which bellboys in the lobby began to reshape themselves, I paused to recover. On my right was the small bar, I think it has some special pet name like the Club Bar, or the Bar Bar, something like that but I can’t remember, where the men habitues, ex-kings and things, and brokers and bankers and art dealers, whiled away their hours gambling for drinks with those dice in sort of hourglass cages, sometimes with one another, sometimes with the waiters, the whole atmosphere exuding that special phony bonhomie of men among men among waiters. This, it occurred to me, was probably what Larry would have called the
real
bar. It had no interest for me whatever.

But just across the way was the large regular bar and that was décidément autre chose. Here all was laughter and confusion. Here beautiful women, their hair dyed gorgeous colors, squashed soft, pale furs into golden chairs, crunched diamonds around glasses of iced drink, jammed bright lipsticked cigarettes into their mouths, and exhaled a heady perfume, while high above
them the crystal chandeliers sparkled and tinkled in accompaniment. Jeweled and be jeweled from youngest to oldest, they all had one thing in common: they actually seemed to
own
their jewelry. It belonged to them; they’d earned it.