PARTISAN REVIEW
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implied a little shudder, "she had hair where it usually wouldn't be."
"Ob, come off it. Where?" I heard an unlikely chuckle. It came
from a man two plates down. He was a somber "distinguished
novelist," a difficult, struggling person whose reputation rested on one
"penultimate" work. The lamplight glittered on his thick eyeglasses.
The Author made a gesture. He had put down knife and fork,
and was running his hands up and down his own coat sleeves. It was
terribly grotesque and funny. His voice was rich with teasing.
"Arms, -"
he said, and the underground torrents held back by
the greatest effort. He pulled himself together with a sort of
wicked humor, strangely mingled like a sound of joking vomit.
"Ub-uh-ar-rms !"
"Arms?" The woman at the end of the table gave way. Her
control was lost in giggles. "B-but, there's nothing wrong with-"
she couldn't keep from laughing, "- nothing wrong with th-that."
"Oh,"
his
voice was rapier steady. "You don't
know.
Have you
ever seen an unwashed beagle? Each spike of spikey hair -" he bit
the sibilance. "Then - you
know.
Like, kind of bunched-up,
r-ruffled - "
Laughter swept the table.
"But with her," he said, "that's just the way it grew!"
O'Leary began to chortle. His face had turned beet red.
"You're -" he sought the compliant word, "you're kidding!"
The Author shook his head, mysterious, negative. He delivered
another smile. I don't know how to describe it, that species of erudi–
tion. He had a quality of lasciviousness and disgust that went straight
to the nerve roots. I am not exaggerating. But meanwhile, oddly, too,
there waS something honorable. That pale, tender glance, unused
to
vulgar nonsense. Though he was doing the finger-act again,
running hands up and down his arms.
Which produced bolts of tinny laughter. Hysterical, not pleasant?
Maybe I'm mistaken. The more unfolding the others became, the
more I closed my shell.
"I remember -" he sat back with a look of confidence. No, he
really seemed boyish and trusting. Or, rather like a blond cowboy ;
at the age of forty-seven, he had a lanky, young man's build, and
must keep himself (I thought) well-exercised. "I remember," he
said, "the girls when I went to school. You know? Like in the fifth
