382
PARTISAN REVIEW
slickers with umbrellas at the ready, I spread a blanket on the lawn.
Tina ate a deviled egg and smoked a cigarette. "Move."
She nodded to the side. "There." I sat between her and the terrace.
"Now." Widely and redly she smiled from the 1940s, a smile of lilting
sorrow which back then had something to do with the war but which
now poured cruelty and courage into the same cup, inviting all comers
while at the same time denying any chance of love. "You're going to
tell me everything."
" Everything?"
"You know what I mean."
I took one of her cigarettes, lit it, and with my hand shaking,
though I don't think she noticed, I said as suavely as I could, sounding
I daresay quite a lot like Charles Boyer, "Maabe I do, on maabe I
don't."
"Okay. I'll .level." She leaned forward and put her hand on my
knee. "I know why you're here."
"Ah." I smiled drolly. "On do you plan to .. ." I nodded toward
the terrace, "tell them?"
She opened her mouth as wide as she could and laughed. She
turned, her hand still on my knee but not visible from the terrace, and
raising her voice to bright girlishness, she called, "We're having such
fun!"
"That's nice, dear," Ursula Dolmon called.
She turned back to me. "Don't worry, honey.
If
I told on you, what
good would it do me?
It
would be a Phallic victory."
"Pyrrhic victory."
She lit another cigarette. "At first I thought you were just after
money... "
"Ah. Le spondulicks..."
"But it's bigger than that, isn't it?"
I couldn't play back to this. I felt everything going out of me.
"And it's
worse
than that." She laughed silently. "Isn 't it?"
I forced a dry chuckle. But there was no Boyer left. There was
nothing left. Somehow she
knew.
"So," she said smugly. "You can tell me."
"But I thought you knew," I said quickly, grasping at straws.
"I do. But not the full particulars, silly boy. You can go ahead and
tell me, I'll not stop what you're up to. For you see" -she worked the
cigarette into her lips without opening them. She inhaled deeply and,
flaring her nostrils, breathed out the smoke-'Tm all for it."
I looked away. "You weren't last night."
