The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [17]
Always before in my past, at a school or country club dance, the jewelry was worn with a smile, so to speak, the implication being that it was really on borrowed time—or at the most, Daddy’s birthday present. And this was true not just of the young girls but of their mothers as well. I mean it always looked as if their mothers had loaned or left them the stuff, or as if their husbands had diffidently kicked through with the donation. Not so with those at the Ritz. Ho, no. These were no mere jewels of indulgent relatives. These had been acquired in some much more serious, mysterious and complete way.
Thus was I reflecting, standing there at the entrance of the bar that night, looking around for Teddy and painfully conscious of myself again. I was still wearing the evening dress I had on when I’d met Larry that morning and the funny thing about it was that, even though twelve hours had elapsed since then, it still wasn’t particularly appropriate. I mean I really felt I could expect it to be correct attire at some point of the day—like a watch that has stopped, eventually just happening to have its hands pointing to the right time. I can’t understand it. I have quite a lot of clothes and go to quite a lot of places. I never actually seem to be wearing the right things at the right time, though. You’d think the law of averages.… Oh well. It’s all very discouraging. Nevertheless this dress that I had on at the time, I encouraged myself, wasn’t actually unbecoming. It was a sort of blue and silver and of course I’d taken off the red leather belt and was wearing the proper belt—which pleased me as well. It was one of the few I hadn’t lost.
Very jeune fille I was, jewelless and all (the pearl necklace that I’d lost had been given to me, as a matter of fact, by Uncle Roger), and as full of safety pins as ever. I probably had one safety pin to every two of those gorgeous creatures’ tiny, gleaming, well-sewn, well-hidden hooks-and-eyes. But what the hell, I told myself, it wasn’t as if I were one of them or even competing with them, for heaven’s sake, I was merely a disinterested spectator at the Banquet of Life. The scientist dropping into the zoo at feeding time. That is what I told myself.
I looked around. Teddy had said he was going to be on time and I saw that he was as good as his word. He was over by a corner, and when he spotted me, he stood up and began waving his hands in short, choppy, excited gestures, trying to attract my attention. At the same time he gave me the impression that he was standing on his toes. All this unconfined joy was deeply unsettling. I was experiencing that terrifying thing of suddenly seeing someone you know terribly well as if for the first time. Even his name seemed to be forming itself in my mind for the first time, and I thought what an utterly dopey name it was for a man of forty, the name of what they used to refer to in the newspapers as “a playboy.” He was a large, neat compact man with a smooth olive complexion, well-groomed sort of tan-colored hair, a sensuous mobile mouth and large white teeth; impressive enough, but let’s face it, there was nothing—well— spontaneous about his looks, if you know what I mean. I mean he had none of Larry’s careless, lazy, crazy animal grace. There he was over in the corner, flashing away this charming, ingratiating smile that I’d never even remembered seeing on him before, and then he began to rub his hands together. For no reason at all, I was suddenly reminded of Charlie Chaplin. Oh Christ, I thought, what have I let myself in for? I could feel myself working up into a large-scale panic and I tried to clamp down on it before