The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [6]
He put his hand over mine, the one with the dead cigarette crumbled in it, and gave me a wonderful smile. “Easy, child, easy. I’m only teasing you. Don’t think I disapprove for Christ’s sake. Live it up, I say. Don’t say no to life, Gorce, you’re only young once.”
We were on last name terms, Keevil and I.
“I’m finding your Grand Old Man just as hard to take as your Scientific Researcher,” I said as nastily as I could, and withdrew my hand.
“I like you, Gorce,” he said. “I mean it. Had my eye on you that summer. High-spirited.” He laughed but at the same time I knew by the way his motor had started up (you could actually see the engine chugging through his body) and the way he was vaguely looking around for a waiter, that the interview, as far as he was concerned, was over. And he was on his way.
“Please order me another Pernod,” I said quickly.
Raised eyebrows.
“Oh, for goodness sake, I’m all right. And have one yourself. Please. Let me pay for this round.” He was the sort of person whose financial circumstances were impossible to guess at, and the quick cynical look he gave me made me start to apologize, but as he didn’t refuse I went on. “Please. I simply must talk to you. I’m in the most awful mess,” and I sighed and buried my head in my hands, stalling for time.
He signaled the waiter and ordered another round.
“O.K.,” he said. “Let’s have it. What’s it all about?”
“Give me a minute,” I pleaded desperately. “I can’t just jump in like that.” My thoughts were chasing each other all over the place, but nothing seemed to sort itself out. Advice, I thought. Ask his advice. On love? Finance? Career? Better stick to love, I decided, it’s what’s on your mind anyway.
And with that my mind went blank.
Only one small irrelevancy finally appeared. “Why are all your tourists she?” I finally asked.
“Because all tourists are she,” he replied promptly.
“No males at all? Don’t be silly.”
“Nope. No males at all. The only male tourists—though naturally there are men visitors—you know, men visiting foreign countries,” he explained maddeningly, “the only male tourists are the ones loping around after their wives. A tourist is a she all right,” he said, finishing it off with a lot of very reminiscent laughter.
“I can see you’ve made quite a study of them,” I snarled scornfully.
“I get around, Gorce, I get around.”
And you, I told myself, are just one of the mob.
It was no joke being in love with Larry, I could see that now; it really hit me for the first time. The waiter had brought us fresh drinks and was pouring the water into my Pernod, and ordinarily this would have had quite a cheering effect on me—its changing color usually reminded me of chemistry sets and magic potions, but now the cloudy green liquid looked merely poisonous and the strong liquorice smell reminded me of nothing so much as a bottle of Old Grandma’s Cough Remedy, hold-your-nose-and-have-a-piece-of-chocolate-quickly-afterwards. I found that the previous drinks had turned icy cold and heavy in my stomach. I felt terribly sober and the inside of my mouth tasted sour. I sighed and picked up the chits. 120 francs.
“It’s cheap anyway,” I said, giving him the money. I sat staring at the drink, trying to get up enough courage to down it.
“What’s eating you, Gorce? Come on, let’s have it.”
His words rang out like coins in the emptiness and I suddenly noticed how still everything around us had become. The students had stopped surging and gone to lunch; the Arab venders were asleep in the sun; and the waiters, even as we watched, stopped waiting and began drifting back to their stations where they came to a standstill—or as near a standstill as they ever got— still rocking gently back and forth on their heels: heartbeats of perpetual motion gently rocking back and forth, their napkins fluttering in the breeze.
The sun shone on: the shade of the awning vanished in the hot, white, shadowless midday. In that blaze of heat I was loving Paris