PARTISAN REVIEW
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washed, pouffed, beribboned, rhinestone collar in place, sweet as a
farting rose, he smiled and always remembered the owner's name.
Last week he had passed Hi-Marx Llewelyn into the loving arms of
his mistress, "Looks like you're all done up too, Mrs. Schlotzer!"
That was worth a five dollar tip and though he munnured the ob–
ligatory "Screw you" as she strutted out the door, it had not saved
him. In three weeks he had made three hundred dollars: it was
fantastic for a boy of seventeen. What did the world expect of him
anyway? He had not wanted the truth for himself: coupled with
the money there was sex, the grinning American two-headed eagle.
By working midtown he could easily meet Shelley, go with her on
her travels in the city, appease the final obsession. Now that he was
making so much money his parents had shut up about his late hours.
The minute he walked in the door he told Mimi Devereux
that he was accepted at Fordham. She was relieved, thinking that
something had happened to him on the way downtown. Now he
could go right on working during college - "Great," she said,
"That's too great!" Mimi had an accent that Jim could not place,
a plain direct speech full of buoyant tones as different from any–
thing he knew as an actress in an English movie. For reasons be–
yond him she was not supposed to be running a poodle parlor.
"I'm something of a rebel," she told Jim. He loved that - Mimi in
her neat skirts and sweaters, loafers and a man's wrist watch. Some–
thing of a rebel.
As
if it were a school r.egulation she never wore
slacks, though it would have been easier with the dogs. When the
shop closed she split a beer with Jim. She told him that the cus–
tomers didn't know a good animal when they saw one. They cared
nothing for breeding. Last year there was a standard black from
Central Park West, clipped in a show cut with the confinnation of
a winner, bred out of Champion Pierrot Prime, and last week when
he came in he looked like a flabby, slouching child.
It
was criminal.
Together, they made fun of the customers and Jim felt that he and
Mimi were of one age, one mind. "You're a natural," she said to
Jim Cogan as he swept up the clippings. High praise, indeed.
"Yes, I'm something of a rebel," Mimi said, "I've just got to
work with dogs." He wondered what it was she should be doing,
what she had left or put aside for the
Chateau de Chien.
Her pro–
gram was to clean up on these well-heeled floozies with their pathetic
ruined poodles and get hold of a kennel- Kerry Blue terriers were
