U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [434]
"Nine o'clock wil do. You sure you don't want to stick around? . . . I don't know what to say to those birds
. . . we might fix you up with a southern bel e." Bil said he was a quiet family man and would get him a flop and go to bed. When he left it meant Charley had to go back to the cocktailparty.
When Charley went back into Merritt's room he found the black eyes of the fat senator fixed on him from be-tween the two cute bobbing hats of two pretty girls. Char-ley found himself saying goodby to them. The browneyed one was a blonde and the blueeyed one had very black hair. A little tang of perfume and kid gloves lingered after them when they left. "Now which would you say was the
-213-prettiest, young man?" The fat senator was standing be-side him looking up at him with a tooconfidential smile. Charley felt his throat stiffen, he didn't know why.
"They're a couple of beauties," he said. "They leave you like the ass between two bundles of hay," said the fat sena-tor with a soft chuckle that played smoothly in and out of the folds of his chin.
"Buridan's ass died of longing, senator," said the thin senator putting the envelope back in his pocket on which he and Andy Merritt had been doping out figures of some kind.
"And so do I, senator," said the fat one, pushing back the streak of black hair from his forehead, his loose jowls shaking. "I die daily. . . . Senator, wil you dine with me and these young men? I believe old Horace is getting us up a little terrapin." He put a smal plump hand on the thin senator's shoulder and another on Char-ley's. "Sorry, senator, the missis is having some friends out at the Chevy Chase Club.""Then I'm afraid these young-sters wil have to put up with eating dinner with a pair of old fogies. I'd hoped you'd bridge the gap between the generations. . . . General Hicks is coming." Charley saw a faint pleased look come over Andy Merritt's serious wel bred face. The fat senator went on with his smooth ponderous courtroom voice. "Perhaps we had better be on our way. .
. . He's coming at seven and those old war-horses tend to be punctual." A great black Lincoln was just coming to a soundless stop at the hotel entry when the four of them, Charley and Andy Merritt and Savage and the fat senator, came out into the Washington night that smelt of oil on asphalt and the exhausts of cars and of young leaves and of wisteriablossoms. The senator's house was a continuation of his car, big and dark and faintly gleaming and soundless. They sprawled in big blackleather chairs and an old white-haired mulatto brought around manhattans on an engraved silver tray.
-214-The senator took each of the men separately to show them where to wash up. Charley didn't much like the little pats on the back he got from the senator's smal padded hands as he was ushered into a big oldfashioned bathroom with a setin marble tub. When he came back from washing his hands the folding doors were open to the diningroom and a halelooking old gentleman with a white mustache and a slight limp was walking up and down in front of them impatiently. "I can smel that terrapin, Bowie," he was saying. "Ole Horace is stil up to his tricks." With the soup and the sherry the general began to
talk from the head of the table. "Of course al this work with flyin'machines is very interestin' for the advance-ment of science . . . I tel you, Bowie, you're one of the last people in this town who sets a decent table . . . per-haps it points to vast possibilities in the distant future. . . . But speakin' as a military man, gentlemen, you know some of us don't feel that they have proved their worth. . . . The terrapin is remarkable, Bowie. . . . I mean we don't put the confidence in the flyin'machine that they seem to have over at the Navy Department. . . . A good glass