I’d learned it from a master, after all. I out-Mumsied Mums herself at dinner tonight.
Oh, and what a dinner! Lightfoot had pulled out all the stops for his treasured daughter. The crispiest champagne, the meltiest foie gras. Tournedos in perfect meaty circles, served with a dollop of creamy Béarnaise. I don’t remember the trimmings. I think there was a salad. Waldorf. A fine Bordeaux, really top-drawer. As I ate, I watched the sparkle of Gogo’s finger while it went about its business. (I couldn’t meet her face, not yet.) Knowing Doctor Paul’s salary as I did, I imagined Lightfoot had selected Gogo’s engagement ring with the same consummate deliberation as he had selected the fiancé himself, and I wondered whether the cost had been subtracted from the half-million-dollar engagement bounty. Whether the money had changed hands yet, or whether Doctor Paul would have to wait for his cold hard cash until the announcement actually appeared in the New York Times.
Oh. Doctor Paul! You’re probably wondering about him. Well, he didn’t say much. His face never quite regained its color, though he ate heartily enough for three fiancés. I watched his strong throat move as he drank his champagne (I couldn’t quite meet his gaze, either) and his capable surgeon’s hands as he dissected his filet. A splendid animal, Doctor Paul. A prime specimen to fertilize the Lightfoot breeding stock. Worth every penny.
Well, that was lovely, I said, after the last graceful bite of bombe glacée, but I really must head home. Work tomorrow, you know! Bright and early!
The gentlemen rose. I felt Doctor Paul’s pleading eyes like an attractor beam from an enemy starship. But I slid right over his gaze, skated right past his desperate ocular apology with a laugh and a Now, you two behave yourselves tonight, you crazy kids, you’re not married yet! I kissed Gogo again and told her she’d better make me her maid of honor, or else.
Then. May I kiss the groom? I daringly asked, and Gogo laughed and said you’d better do it quick, before I get started, I might never want to stop, just look at him! Laugh laugh. Oh, how we laughed.
I leaned in and laid one on Doctor Paul’s terrified cheek, a big fat see-if-I-care to Mr. S. Barnard Lightfoot III. And then I . . .
Well, damn. Here I am, going on like this, after I promised not to indulge myself.
Anyway. Et cetera, et cetera. Good-bye, good-bye. You get the idea. The Lightfoot door slammed behind me, leaving me in the dark void between two pale streetlights, and I trudged down Seventieth Street to Lexington Avenue and two blocks to the subway entrance. I didn’t want to take a taxi. I wanted the rattle of New York around me, I wanted stink and strangers and the sour dank air of the IRT clutching me to its bosom. I wanted hustle and bustle. I wanted to know that millions of lives were playing out on my doorstep, and not one of them gave a damn about my little problems.
I took the local train down to Union Square and trudged the beaten path west by southwest. The air had hardened, and a flake or two blurred past me to disappear into the rotten gray pavement. I thought, how magical, the first glimpse of snow. By March I would be sick of it, but here in this November instant those tiny flakes swirled with the unspeakable purity of a divine gift.
The storefronts were all closed and barricaded in metal. I passed fruit stands and bookstores, dry cleaners and travel agents. The snow was picking up, filling the air. I felt it ping the back of my throat as I breathed. I turned the corner of Bleecker and Christopher Street, where the crowd at the Apple Tree was just getting started. A man in a thick black overcoat stood against the lamppost just outside, smoking a cigarette, staring at the snow. I might have passed him right by, if the light from one of the windows hadn’t fallen on his face just so.
I stopped. Took a few more steps. Stopped and turned.
“Didn’t know you smoked, Mr. Tibbs,” I said quietly.
He looked startled, and yet wearily not. As if he couldn’t be bothered to feel any surprise at the sight of me. He took an awkward puff and blew it into the street. “I don’t.”
I glanced at the wide-open entrance to the Apple Tree, and back to Tibby. “Need a drink?”
He finished the cigarette and dropped it on the sidewalk, where he crushed it with his heel. “Sure do.”
By the smell of him, as we walked the block or two to my apartment building, this wouldn’t be his first drink of the evening. Possibly not his second, either, but who was I to judge? I unlocked the door and left him to follow me upstairs.
“Obviously we don’t pay you enough,” he said, when he walked through the door. He took in the disheveled living room, the half-dressed roommate asleep on the sofa, the half-full bottle of Smirnoff on the table.