“Mexican dwarfs?”

Laura looked at her blankly. “Well, I don’t know about dwarfs.”

A woman got into the elevator with them. She seemed galvanized the moment Annie entered. It was a slow elevator.

“Why are you staring at me?”

“You’re so beautiful,” said the woman. Annie flushed, looking apologetically at Laura and then down at the Heida-designed black suit she was wearing. It was a beautiful suit, expensive, the kind of cut and fit and cloth that made all the difference.

The show was over at eleven, and Annie emerged into the street, intending to get into her car which was parked on the opposite side, when someone hailed her. She turned and looked down to another more elaborately lit storefront. A short man, whose face she couldn’t make out, was waving to her. She walked over to him. She was quite sure he had called her, Ann.

It was Ben Greenhouse.

“My dear Ann,” he said. He was drunk, and he had become stout.

“Hello, Ben.”

“Come in here. We’re having an art show. The studio’s going all out for culture, a spasm that will pass. Come in and look at the freaks.”

She hesitated, but he took her arm and as soon as he’d touched her, she remembered the lifeless fastidiousness of his ways.

Inside the room, swarms of people in evening dress moved from group to group in front of the paintings. In the middle of the room, on a velvet-covered couch, sat an elderly actor whom Annie recognized from a dozen movies. Sitting along the back of the couch, drooping over him like week-old gladiolas, were a number of girls. Ben was sarcastic in his introduction of Annie to people who affected to take no notice of his words and who moved out of range of her vision no sooner than they had touched her hand. She wanted to leave. “I must go,” she said. “I have to work in the morning.”

“Oh, but I want to hear about you.”

“You’ve changed,” she said, angered by his grip on her arm.

“So have you. You’re all grown up, aren’t you?”

“No,” she said furiously. “I’m not.”

“I never thought you’d remain a child,” he said interestedly.

“You haven’t thought of me at all!”

“Oh—that poor young man. You remember the day on the beach? His body?”

“Listen, I do have to go.”

He released her then. He looked offended. “Well, if you want to …I’m simply curious. It’s my field you know, curiosity…”

She was thinking how often she’d known people she really hadn’t liked, had spent hours and days and months with them. Greenhouse was ridiculous. Thin, he’d been nervous and jumpy and interesting. Now, he was merely fat.

“I detest your curiosity,” she said suddenly in a loud voice, attracting the languid interest of several people nearby. “It’s only greediness.”

“You’d better go.”

She did.