Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [102]
Immediately we were pronounced man and wife, I kissed the bride, and made straight for the bar. “What’s the score?”
“Mahovlich went off for cross-checking a couple of minutes ago and Backstrom44 scored. So it’s one–zip, but it’s still early in the first period. They’re missing Beliveau bad,” said the bartender.
Ill at ease among so many strangers at the Ritz, my mood unspeakable until everything changed. Then and forever. Across the crowded room, as Howard Keel once belted out,45 there stood the most enchanting woman I had ever seen. Long hair black as a raven’s wing, striking blue eyes, ivory skin, slender, wearing a layered blue chiffon cocktail dress, and moving about with the most astonishing grace. Oh, that face of incomparable beauty. Those bare shoulders. My heart ached at the sight of her. “Who is that woman being talked at by Myer Cohen?” I asked Irv.
“Shame on you. Don’t tell me you’ve only been married for an hour and you’ve already got eyes for another woman.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m curious, that’s all.”
“I forget her first name,” said Irv, “but I do know that Harry Kastner tried it on with her, maybe a half-hour ago, and whatever she said, it made him turn pale. She’s got a sharp tongue, that one. She lives in Toronto since her parents died.”
Absolutely exquisite, she stood alone but alert now. Myer Cohen dismissed, another suitor had gone to fetch her a glass of champagne. When she caught me staring, and saw me starting toward her, she averted those blue eyes to die for, retreating, turning her back to join a group that included that bastard Terry McIver. I wasn’t the only one watching. Skinny bony-backed and girdled butterball wives were looking her up and down disapprovingly. Then The Second Mrs. Panofsky was with me, having just finished a dance with Boogie. “Your friend is such a melancholy man, so vulnerable,” she said. “I wish we could do something for him.”
“There’s nothing to be done.”
“I think you should go over and talk to your friend McIver. He seems lost here.”
“Fuck him.”
“Sh. That’s my grandfather at the table right behind us. Didn’t you invite McIver?”
“Terry comes to all my weddings.”
“Oh, nice. Very nice. Why don’t you have another drink? Your father has already had too much, and if he starts on one of his stories my mother will die of shame.”
“Now tell me who is that woman bloody Gordon Lipschitz is coming on to?”
“Oh, that one. Forget it, Mr. Love Bucket. You’re not good enough for her. Now will you please do something about your father. Slip this into your pocket.”
“What is it?”
“A cheque for five hundred dollars from Lou Singer. I hate to nag, but I think you’ve already had enough to drink.”
“What do you mean, I’m not good enough for her?”
“Because if I knew she was going to honour us with her presence, I would have laid out a red carpet. Don’t tell me you find her attractive?”
“Certainly not, my darling.”
“I’ll bet she wears a size nine-and-a-half shoe, and even at that it squeezes her toes. Her name’s Miriam Greenberg. We were at McGill together, she had a scholarship, a good thing too because the fees would have been difficult. Her father was a cutter and her mother took in sewing from a dressmaker. She comes on so grand, tell me about it, but she was brought up in one of those cold-water flats on Rachel. My uncle Fred used to own a bunch of them