The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [7]
And there sitting opposite me, stretching himself luxuriously in the sun, his eyes lazily examining his half-empty drink, was Larry, the one I loved the best … sensationally uninterested.
All at once I sat bolt upright and let out a yelp.
I suddenly remembered what I was doing in that arrondissement in the first place. I had been in fact on my way to the Sorbonne to meet my lover, who was attending an International Students Conference there for his Embassy. And at that very moment, as if I myself had conjured him (though I supposed I must have unconsciously registered him in the corner of my eye) he came striding along the boulevard large as life: Teddy—Alfredo Ourselli Visconti himself, looking suave and Latin and livid.
I glanced at my watch. Wow! I was just an hour too late. Then, stupidly, I tried to hide my head with my hands. It was too late, of course, and the worst of it was he had also caught me trying to hide. Being a Latin, seeing me there with a young and handsome man, he naturally put two and two together and for once in his life arrived at the right answer about me.
In a panic I knew that he must not sit down with us; if he did, he would stay and Larry would go. And that would be that. There wasn’t a moment to be lost. Without explanation, I dashed over to the street corner to intercept him.
“So I’ve caught you at last, have I?” he said, in that half-serious half-teasing man-of-the-world voice he always reserved for matters of the heart. Whatever guilt I felt vanished in my exasperation.
“We can’t all lead a triple life as successfully as you do,” I replied coolly, and saw a really desperate, haggard look come over his face. “He’s an old, old friend,” I added hastily. “He’s brought me news of home. Very important news.”
“I see,” he said stiffly. “Very well. We must talk of all this tonight. At the Ritz?”
“Yop.” He always brought out the succinct in me.
“Shall we say at eleven o’clock then, as usual?”
“Not later?” He was always up to a half an hour late.
“It may be difficult to get away,” he said, “but I shall certainly try to be on time if I can.”
He looked so pleased I could have killed him.
If I hadn’t been in such a hurry to get back to Larry, I would have told him then and there, as I’d been vaguely planning to do for about a week, how hellishly bored I was with all his sophisticated maneuvers. It was partly out of necessity, of course, having both a wife and a mistress, as well as myself, that he jammed and juggled his days and nights with arranged and rearranged rendezvous. But that was not the only reason he always turned up so late. There was another one, as I suspected when he formed the habit of meeting me around eleven at the Ritz bar: it was that he simply refused to do anything in a straightforward way. He felt that his unpunctuality increased his mystery and desirability.
The unfortunate thing was that he had reckoned without my naïveté. I was honestly so thrilled at being at the Ritz in the first place that I didn’t mind how long I was kept waiting. There were so many marvelous new things to look at and so many marvelous new drinks to experiment with, sazaracs and slings and heaven knows what else, so that at first I never even noticed the passing of time. But then as the novelty wore off and I took to bringing magazines and novels along with me, I noticed how really put out he was when instead of discovering me ceaselessly scanning the horizon for him, he found me deep in Paris-Match.
As I hurriedly said good-by to Teddy, meekly apologizing for not meeting him at the Sorbonne, and promising to see him at the Ritz that evening, I had a sinister premonition of how embarrassing an homme fatal could be when his charms are no longer fatal to you.
I turned round to find Larry quietly taking in the scene. When he caught my eye he began grinning from ear to ear. I felt my ankles wobble under me.
“Watch out,” he shouted as I walked toward him, “you’re going to knock over that chair!”
But of course it was too late.
Larry was really enjoying himself now. He laughed