“But come with us,” the girls are calling above the waves, two of them holding up an enormous wicker basket out of which lean sleek green wine bottles and rough-crusted loaves still from under their white cloth steaming in little wisps feathering off of chestnut glazes and paler split-streaks, “come—sur la plage…”

“I’ll just,” Bloat half out the door, “keep them company, until you…”

“Sur la plage,” Tantivy a bit dreamy, blinking in the sun, smiling down at their good-morning’s wishes come true, “oh, it sounds like a painting. Something by an Impressionist. A Fauve. Full of light… .”

Slothrop goes flicking witch hazel off his hands. The smell in the room brings back a moment of Berkshire Saturdays—bottles of plum and amber tonics, fly-studded paper twists swayed by the overhead fan, twinges of pain from blunt scissors… . Struggling out of his sweatshirt, lit cigarette in his mouth, smoke coming out the neck like a volcano, “Hey could I bum one of your—”

“You’ve already got the pack,” cries Tantivy—“God almighty, what is that supposed to be?”

“What’s what?” Slothrop’s face nothing but innocent as he slips into and begins to button the object in question.

“You’re joking, of course. The young ladies are waiting, Slothrop, do put on something civilized, there’s a good chap—”

“All set,” Slothrop on the way past the mirror combing his hair into the usual sporty Bing Crosby pompadour.

“You can’t expect us to be seen with—”

“My brother Hogan sent it to me,” Slothrop lets him know, “for my birthday, all the way from the Pacific. See on the back? under the fellows in that outrigger canoe there, to the left of those hibiscus blossoms, it seZ SOUVENIR OF HONOLULU? This is the authentic item, Mucker-Maffick, not some cheap imitation.”

“Dear God,” moans Tantivy, trailing him forlornly out of the room, shading his eyes from the shirt, which glows slightly in the dimness of the corridor. “At least tuck it in and cover it with something. Here, I’ll even lend you this Norfolk jacket… .” Sacrifice indeed: the coat is from a Savile Row establishment whose fitting rooms are actually decorated with portraits of all the venerable sheep—some nobly posed up on crags, others in pensive, soft close-ups—from whom the original fog-silvered wool was sheared.

“Must be woven out of that barbed wire,” is Slothrop’s opinion, “what girl’d want to get near anything like that?”

“Ah, but, but would any woman in her right mind want to be within ten miles of that-that ghastly shirt, eh?”

“Wait!” From someplace Slothrop now produces a gaudy yellow, green and orange display handkerchief, and over Tantivy’s groans of horror arranges it in his friend’s jacket pocket so as to stick out in three points. “There!” beaming, “that’s what you call real sharp!”

They emerge into sunlight. Gulls begin to wail, the garment on Slothrop blazes into a refulgent life of its own. Tantivy squeezes his eyes shut. When he opens them, the girls are all attached to Slothrop, stroking the shirt, nibbling at its collar-points, cooing in French.