“I like to model,” Annie said. “It makes everything stop.”

“What stops?”

“Oh, I don’t know…the noise of things.”

“That man you came with is very good-looking,” said Mrs. Poole. “He’s too old for you, isn’t he? And what’s he carrying on about like that? Just drinking, I guess. When men start drinking, I sit and wait till it’s over. I told Leonard he made that punch too strong.”

“I think Walter was a little drunk before we came.”

“Oh, well, then…”

At the threshold of the living room, Mrs. Poole paused and sighed softly. “We’re going back to New Orleans in the spring. I’ll be glad. This is not my real life, mooching around these nasty rooms, keeping the children occupied.”

Party voices slammed into Annie’s consciousness, shattering the peace she had felt in the bedroom. A tall, thin girl, well made up, elegantly dressed, was gesturing excitedly at Walter.

“I can’t stand people who talk about Shakespeare and Russian movies the way you do!” she cried. “When I hear people talking that way, I feel crazy! I can’t abide your self-importance. That look on your face…all greasy with self-importance! God! It makes me want to belch! What do you mean, you laughed at The Cherry Orchard and shocked the people sitting around you? Why, you were just trying to show how original you are! We’re all a bunch of obscene monkeys parading around as if we were real! I laugh so hard I can hardly get to sleep at night…”

“I can believe that,” murmured Mrs. Poole. Walter grinned provocatively. The girl suddenly burst into laughter. “You, a radical!” she exclaimed, rocking slightly on her long thin legs. “I never knew one yet who wasn’t in it for personal reasons…”

“Well, you damned well know everything,” Walter replied. How remarkable it would be, Annie thought longingly, to be able to talk to Walter like that—to tease him!

Later, as they walked toward the Columbus Circle subway station, Walter talked about the girl. “Terrific!” he said. “Did you see the way she was dressed? She knows exactly what she looks like and just what to do with her looks.”

“I haven’t got money to look like that.”

“It isn’t just money. It’s style.”

“You’re always saying it’s money.”

Now, he said, as they went down the subway stairs, he was going to take her to meet some of his friends who lived in the Village. Elmira, the wife of the couple they were to visit, had formerly been married to his best friend, Kenneth, a great mad Irishman. “He brought me into the party.” Once, he told her, Kenneth had taken him to a wake; they’d broken the corpse’s legs and arms so he could sit up and join in the drinking. Elmira was married now to a dim fellow, but he didn’t blame her. No one could have stayed married to Kenneth. He was larger than marriage. Walter sang to himself on the train. He was very drunk.