It was Saturday and September and half-past seven at night, and my
birthday. I remembered all that. It was easier to remember that, than to
think which way the stairs curved.
Kenneth had given a cocktail party for me. I had come home on a bus to
get some air. Now I had to dress for late dinner with Bill. It was just
a pause in the day’s hard drinking. Before I dressed, I was going in to
tell Lucia what it felt like to be me. Lucia could not go to the
cocktail party. She had to see Sam off somewhere. Sam was getting pretty
incessant. Too bad. Lucia should marry someone who looked more like
Apollo than Sam. But she had once. Arch looked something like Apollo.
Lots of other women besides Lucia had thought so too, from all accounts.
Well this was the last flight of stairs. I stepped through the hem of my
dress, and got my foot out again, somehow, and stumbled against Lucia’s
door. It opened, so I went in. Lucia was lying down reading. She sat up
and began to laugh.
“Patricia, my darling, _what_ an edge!”
“Celebrating . . . celebrating being twenty-five years old. Sit down and
tell you about it.”
“Do you want some hangover medicine?”
“No. Want to talk.”
“All right. How does it feel to be twenty-five? I forget.”
“You got over it, I expect I’ll get over it, give me time. Got over
being twenty. Lucia, I’ll be thirty-five, like as not, some day.”
“Then you can settle down in life and let your hips grow.”
“I can’t eat as much now I’m twenty-five as I did when I was twenty. I
used to call chicken patties, and chocolate layer cake lunch. Now I have
an endive salad; I guess that’s the biggest difference.”
“What else is there, Pat?”
“I’m just as good-looking and I’m thinner and I certainly wear my
clothes better. Used to wear floppy hats with flowers on them and Pete’d
tell me I was dewy. Used to be a dewy girl but now, by gosh, I don’t. Is
that funny, Lucia, or am I drunk?”
“Both,” said Lucia, politely. “Go on.”
“Oh yes, when I was twenty I planned to have a Great Romance. Well, did
I _not_? _And_ marry it?”
“Talk about something else, Pat. What presents did you get?”
“Men used to bring me violets and now they bring me Scotch. Liquor isn’t
a gift to a woman, it’s just an investment in her. One’s Great
Romance—”
“Oh dear,” said Lucia. “Well if you must, you must. What about it?”
“One’s Great Romance . . . Passion, Memory, Dust . . . Lucia, I have a
literary edge. . . . That’s Galsworthy. Isn’t it funny how tired my
Great Romance got of me? If I’d known as much at twenty as I do at
twenty-five, maybe I could have kept it, do you think? . . . Never have
another Romance like it, him, Peter . . .”
“That’s the everlasting mercy of the Lord, I expect,” said Lucia.
“Yes, another Great Romance would be the death of me. One gets the same
feeling, or near enough, on four Manhattans if they’re good; and that
failing, one can see what five will do. The hangover from Manhattan’s
shorter’n that from Romances . . .”
“Tell me more about the Manhattans,” said Lucia.
“Manhattans, they’re good. They’ll never turn you into
lady-entering-room-preceded-by-diaphram, either, if you don’t mix ’em
with bread and pastries. The way to look at one’s Great Romance is
. . .”
“Oh Lord,” said Lucia.
“It’s very grand to get it over young. And no one’s got tired of me
since. I get tired first. Once or twice it’s been just about one date
first, but that’s adequate isn’t it, Lucia?”
“Entirely adequate, dear.”
“The air is one of those things that it’s more blessed to give than to
receive. Also the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away—smaller and less
troubling Romances. Lucia, it’s a _Biblical_ edge I’ve got.”
“Fine. What do you want, now you’re twenty-five?”
“I don’t know. But then I never did know what I wanted, except Peter,
and that was very little help to me wasn’t it? I guess I want to make
eight thousand dollars next year and buy a couple of bonds for my old
age.”
“You’ll buy three fur coats, a darn sight more likely, Pat.”
“Maybe. Anyway I shan’t make eight thousand—too lazy to get that much
freelancing. Make about six and spend about seven. Oh I forgot. When I
was twenty I wanted to write, and now I do fashion copy.”
“Did you accomplish everything else you set out to do in life just like
that, Pat?”
“Hell, no, but I’m a Futilitarian, so it doesn’t matter. I am futile,
you are futile, we are futile, they are more futile. But we two have a
nice time at it. We don’t get so bored that we have to talk about sex.”
“Don’t you start talking about sex now.”
“Of course not, why talk about it, better put up with it in a cheerful
way.”
“Like a brave little woman,” said Lucia.
“I feel horribly dizzy, Lucia. Listen, do you suppose I’m going on all
my life, waiting for Peter, when I’m twenty-five and thirty-five and
forty—Lucia. It’s so _long_—”
“There, darling. Think of something else quick. Look at the newspaper.
Here’s a Graphic. See the pretty picture of the oldest divorcée in New
York State. (I bet it’s a composite photograph. They probably used her
grand-daughter’s legs in it). There. See, you have lots of time. You may
summon enthusiasm about being a divorcée yet.”
“_Isn’t_ she old, Lucia. Poor thing, do you suppose she was ever bunned
in her life? Lucia, _think_ of the old women who were never bunned, poor
dears. . . .”
“Think of all the middle-aged females who never were—all the feminists,
Pat.”
“How few, Lucia, how melancholily few, ever knew that beautiful
swinging-of-the-spheres sensation, toward the end of a hard-drinking
evening . . . when one could pass out, or laugh rather noisily about
divers absurdities that occur to one . . . but does neither, just
breathes very evenly, and goes on talking in a low voice about the
sources of anti-Klu-KIux feeling in the South, or some-such subject
. . . and feels on the edge of knowing what one really thinks about
everything. How few, how sadly few. . . . Oh, Lucia, the new freedom for
women came just too late to save the old saloon.”