Resting first on one foot then on the other they stood waiting, their napkins under their arms. From the restaurant below among the buttery smells of food and the tinkle of knives and forks and plates, came the softly gyrating sound of a waltz.
When he saw the headwaiter bow outside the door Emile compressed his lips into a deferential smile. There was a long-toothed blond woman in a salmon operacloak swishing on the arm of a moonfaced man who carried his top hat ahead of him like a bumper; there was a little curlyhaired girl in blue who was showing her teeth and laughing, a stout woman in a tiara with a black velvet ribbon round her neck, a bottlenose, a long cigarcolored face… shirtfronts, hands straightening white ties, black gleams on top hats and patent leather shoes; there was a weazlish man with gold teeth who kept waving his arms spitting out greetings in a voice like a crow’s and wore a diamond the size of a nickel in his shirtfront. The redhaired cloakroom girl was collecting the wraps. The old waiter nudged Emile. ‘He’s de big boss,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth as he bowed. Emile flattened himself against the wall as they shuffled rustled into the room. A whiff of patchouli when he drew his breath made him go suddenly hot to the roots of his hair.
‘But where’s Fifi Waters?’ shouted the man with the diamond stud.
‘She said she couldnt get here for half an hour. I guess the Johnnies wont let her get by the stage door.’
‘Well we cant wait for her even if it is her birthday; never waited for anyone in my life.’ He stood a second running a roving eye over the women round the table, then shot his cuffs out a little further from the sleeves of his swallowtail coat, and abruptly sat down. The caviar vanished in a twinkling. ‘And waiter what about that Rhine wine coupe?’ he croaked huskily. ‘De suite monsieur…’ Emile holding his breath and sucking in his cheeks, was taking away the plates. A frost came on the goblets as the old waiter poured out the coupe from a cut glass pitcher where floated mint and ice and lemon rind and long slivvers of cucumber.
‘Aha, this’ll do the trick.’ The man with the diamond stud raised his glass to his lips, smacked them and set it down with a slanting look at the woman next him. She was putting dabs of butter on bits of bread and popping them into her mouth, muttering all the while:
‘I can only eat the merest snack, only the merest snack.’
‘That dont keep you from drinkin Mary does it?’
She let out a cackling laugh and tapped him on the shoulder with her closed fan. ‘O Lord, you’re a card, you are.’
‘Allume moi ça, sporca madonna,’ hissed the old waiter in Emile’s ear.
When he lit the lamps under the two chafing dishes on the serving table a smell of hot sherry and cream and lobster began to seep into the room. The air was hot, full of tinkle and perfume and smoke. After he had helped serve the lobster Newburg and refilled the glasses Emile leaned against the wall and ran his hand over his wet hair. His eyes slid along the plump shoulders of the woman in front of him and down the powdered back to where a tiny silver hook had come undone under the lace rushing. The baldheaded man next to her had his leg locked with hers. She was young, Emile’s age, and kept looking up into the man’s face with moist parted lips. It made Emile dizzy, but he couldn’t stop looking.
‘But what’s happened to the fair Fifi?’ creaked the man with the diamond stud through a mouthful of lobster. ‘I suppose that she made such a hit again this evening that our simple little party dont appeal to her.’
‘It’s enough to turn any girl’s head.’
‘Well she’ll get the surprise of her young life if she expected us to wait. Haw, haw, haw,’ laughed the man with the diamond stud. ‘I never waited for anybody in my life and I’m not going to begin now.’
Down the table the moonfaced man had pushed back his plate and was playing with the bracelet on the wrist of the woman beside him. ‘You’re the perfect Gibson girl tonight, Olga.’
‘I’m sitting for my portrait now,’ she said holding up her goblet against the light.
‘To Gibson?’
‘No to a real painter.’
‘By Gad I’ll buy it.’
‘Maybe you wont have a chance.’
She nodded her blond pompadour at him.
‘You’re a wicked little tease, Olga.’
She laughed keeping her lips tight over her long teeth.
A man was leaning towards the man with the diamond stud, tapping with a stubby finger on the table.
‘No sir as a real estate proposition, Twentythird Street has crashed… That’s generally admitted… But what I want to talk to you about privately sometime Mr Godalming, is this… How’s all the big money in New York been made? Astor, Vanderbilt, Fish… In real estate of course. Now it’s up to us to get in on the next great clean-up… It’s almost here… Buy Forty…’
The man with the diamond stud raised one eyebrow and shook his head. ‘For one night on Beauty’s lap, O put gross care away… or something of the sort… Waiter why in holy hell are you so long with the champagne?’ He got to his feet, coughed in his hand and began to sing in his croaking voice:
Everybody clapped. The old waiter had just divided a baked Alaska and, his face like a beet, was prying out a stiff champagnecork. When the cork popped the lady in the tiara let out a yell. They toasted the man in the diamond stud.
For he’s a jolly good fellow…
‘Now what kind of a dish d’ye call this?’ the man with the bottlenose leaned over and asked the girl next to him. Her black hair parted in the middle; she wore a palegreen dress with puffy sleeves. He winked slowly and then stared hard into her black eyes.
‘This here’s the fanciest cookin I ever put in my mouth… D’ye know young leddy, I dont come to this town often… He gulped down the rest of his glass. An when I do I usually go away kinder disgusted…’ His look bright and feverish from the champagne explored the contours of her neck and shoulders and roamed down a bare arm. ‘But this time I kinder think…’
‘It must be a great life prospecting,’ she interrupted flushing.
‘It was a great life in the old days, a rough life but a man’s life… I’m glad I made my pile in the old days… Wouldnt have the same luck now.’
She looked up at him. ‘How modest you are to call it luck.’
Emile was standing outside the door of the private room. There was nothing more to serve. The redhaired girl from the cloakroom walked by with a big flounced cape on her arm. He smiled, tried to catch her eye. She sniffed and tossed her nose in the air. Wont look at me because I’m a waiter. When I make some money I’ll show ’em.
‘Dis; tella Charlie two more bottle Moet and Chandon, Gout Americain,’ came the old waiter’s hissing voice in his ear.
The moonfaced man was on his feet. ‘Ladies and Gentlemen…’
‘Silence in the pigsty…’ piped up a voice.
‘The big sow wants to talk,’ said Olga under her breath.
‘Ladies and gentlemen owing to the unfortunate absence of our star of Bethlehem and fulltime act…’
‘Gilly dont blaspheme,’ said the lady with the tiara.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, unaccustomed as I am…’
‘Gilly you’re drunk.’
‘… Whether the tide… I mean whether the waters be with us or against us…’
Somebody yanked at his coat-tails and the moonfaced man sat down suddenly in his chair.