"Good heavens, Paul--!"
Mrs. Doffin reached the point where neither nostril would contain
another match. She tamped them pensively and nodded to herself. They
protruded, I would say, the best part of an inch--all neat and even.
Mrs. Doffin then removed her hat. It was the first time I had seen the
full billow of her hair. It looked like excelsior on which paprika had
been sprinkled. She set the hat on the seat at her side and glanced
with a bright smile and opaque eyes at the whole earth. I suppose the
waiters had failed to notice her new gambit owing to the fact that
she, and her soundless palaver, were fixtures in the place, like the
intruding girders and the gaudy horsemen on the walls. All the waiters
ever saw was her glass, when she emptied it. She could have breathed
fire, or come in tattooed, and they would have observed no change.
From her hat, Mrs. Doffin withdrew a hatpin, long and as black as any
of her garments or their accessories.
This, with the utmost aplomb, she thrust through both her cheeks,
hesitating only momentarily at the midpoint, evidently in order to get
her tongue beneath the line of direction. One does not--her pleased
look seemed to say--absurdly and clumsily impale one's tongue, in these
little maneuvers.
"Fred," I called at this point. "Mrs. Doffin needs you."
He looked. His eyes bulged and his brows shot high. He hurried toward
her.
She flirted her fingers at him.
He signalled to Jay.
Together they escorted Mrs. Doffin from the room.
Nobody ever saw her again.
There are homes for the rich to do such things in.
5
"The heat is getting people," Paul said, as he and Marcia bade me
good-bye in the lobby.
Marcia gave me one last look. She knew she hadn't passed.
She ascribed the wrong cause to the fact.
She thought that, since I'd seen her sensual impulse was not confined
to one person, I'd written her off as a slut.
Whose sensual impulses have ever been confined to one person?
Were they so limited, human breeding would be the rarest of activities
and marriage almost unheard of.