U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [580]
-549-Mary wore one of Ada's dresses that didn't fit her very wel and went out in the morning to have her hair curled at Saks's where Ada always had hers curled. They had some cocktails at Ada's place before they went. At the last minute Mary said she wouldn't go because she'd final y got it out of Ada that it was George Barrow who was going to be at the party. Ada made Mary drink another cocktail and a reckless feeling came over her and she said al right, let's get a move on.
There was a smiling colored maid in a fancy lace cap and apron at the door of the house who took them down the hal to a bedroom ful of coats and furs where they were to take off their wraps. As Ada was doing her face at the dressingtable Mary whispered in her ear, "Just think what our reliefcommittee could do with the money that woman wastes on senseless entertaining." "But she's a darling," Ada whispered back excitedly. "Honestly, you'l like her." The door had opened behind their backs letting in a racketing gust of voices, laughs, tinkle of glasses, a whiff of perfume and toast and cigarettesmoke and gin.
"Oh, Ada," came a ringing voice. "Eveline darling, how lovely you look. . . . This is Mary French, you know I said I'd bring her. . . . She's my oldest friend." Mary found herself shaking hands with a tal slender woman in a pearlgrey dress. Her face was very white and her lips were very red and her long large eyes were exaggerated with mascara. "So nice of you to come," Eveline Johnson said and sat down suddenly among the furs and wraps on the bed. "It sounds like a lovely party," cried Ada.
"I hate parties. I don't know why I give them," said Eveline Johnson. "Wel , I guess I've got to go back to the menagerie. . . . Oh, Ada, I'm so tired."
Mary found herself studying the harsh desperate lines under the makeup round Mrs. Johnson's mouth and the strained tenseness of the cords of her neck. Their sil y life tel s on them, she was saying to herself.
-550-"What about the play?" Ada was asking. "I was so ex-cited when I heard about it."
"Oh, that's ancient history now," said Eveline Johnson sharply. "I'm working on a plan to bring over the bal et
. . . turn it into something American. . . . I'l tel you about it some time."
"Oh, Eveline, did the screenstar come?" asked Ada, giggling.
"Oh, yes, they always come." Eveline Johnson sighed.
"She's beautiful. . . . You must meet her."Î
"Of course anybody in the world would come to your parties, Eveline."
"I don't know why they should . . . they seem just too boring to me." Eveline Johnson was ushering them through some sliding doors into a highceilinged room dusky from shaded lights and cigarettesmoke where they were swal owed up in a jam of wel dressed people talking and making faces and tossing their heads over cocktail glasses. There seemed no place to stand so Mary sat down at the end of a couch beside a little marbletopped table. The other people on the couch were jabbering away among themselves and paid no attention to her. Ada and the hostess had disappeared behind a wal of men's suits and afternoongowns.
Mary had had time to smoke an entire cigarette before Ada came back fol owed by George Barrow, whose thin face looked flushed and whose adamsapple stuck out further than ever over his col ar. He had a cocktail in each hand. "Wel wel wel , little Mary French, after al these years," he was saying with a kind of forced jol ity. "If youkriew the trouble we'd had getting these through the crush."
"Hel o, George," said Mary casual y. She took the cock-tail he handed her and drank it off. After the other drinks she'd had it made her head spin. Somehow George and Ada managed to squeeze themselves in on the couch on
-551-either side of Mary. "I want to hear al about the coal-strike," George was saying, knitting his brows. "Too bad the insurgent locals had to choose a moment when a strike played right into the operators' hands." Mary got angry.
"That's just the sort of remark I'd expect from a man of your sort. If we waited for a favorable moment there wouldn't be any strikes. . . . There never