It was, as I said, about three o’clock. The electric numerals on the great clocks attested to this. Downstairs, in the main ballroom, the Danbury Hatfitters and Suspension Hose Association was gathered in conference. A hansom cab clattered by in the park: the jovial cabman had wax sunflowers in his top hat. Somewhere the first drink of the day was being mixed. Softly in their vertical shafts the recently repaired elevators hummed.

And I bustled about. I hovered, anxiously. She had chosen a distant corner of the green couch to cry in. I vanished; I reappeared; the ice-filled glass tinkled. She nursed its coldness. I persuaded her to drink; she drank. I urged her not to cry; she stopped crying. I thought it a victory. She sat in what seemed a self-accusatory silence.

“Aurora.”

“Yes?”

“Please.”

There was a pit. Of some sort. She stared down mockingly into it.

She had gone to a party. One of those parties. It had happened that night at the party.

What party?

Oh, some jerks she knew. Recently married. He did singing commercials. They had all his tapes. And did they but play them. She hadn’t had any dinner.

When was the party?

Exactly long enough ago.

It must have been the party. She got stinking. Was she but loaded. Six martinis. Real bombs. And people kept coming in. Stifling. Of course, she should have eaten something. She was going to upchuck any minute. So she went into the bedroom. Had the whirly whirlies, and all. Plopped down on all the coats. Furs and suede, and all. And passed out. Absolutely the whole bit.

And?

And. And. Well: and woke up. Some faceless creep all over her. Dress up to her belly. That was a picture, wasn’t it? She ought to get the door prize for the best costume. Never even found out who the son of a bitch was. Boff and gone. In the dark. What a hangup. Laid. By Henry the Turd. Could I refill her glass, please?

Most slowly, with a soft desire to beat my hands despairingly together, I went into the kitchenette and refilled her glass.

Returned.

Silently extended it.

Was as silently taken.

Sat.

Stared at her.

Children: really, children; and these terrible games.

St. Patrick’s tolled. Electronically, of course. Christ was polystyrene, too.

31

The cafeteria was in a cavernous basement beneath an office building. One felt oppressively the weight of all the stories. A metal plaque identified it, should the bomb fall, as an air-raid shelter. I went through the revolving door. At a square formica-topped table, in the sick light, I saw Michael. Aurora had said this was where he would be. In the late afternoon he was always here with his friends. Those, evidently, at the table with him, were the friends. The light in the cafeteria, as though exhausted by the weight of the office building above, was pale and grayish. Steam rose from the meats at the steam tables. It was after five and the huge cafeteria was empty except for Michael and his friends and, here and there, a few isolated and hunched-over figures eating silently in the grayish light. A bus boy mopped the tiled floor. I watched a counterman turn with a tongs the veal cutlets in their pans. He was keeping the meat moist. There was a hollow persistent clatter of dishes and a sort of dull drifting movement in the weak light. The place might have been the commissary in a large modernized prison. I saw Michael look up at me as I moved toward the table.