But the most extraordinary thing was happening. I was hurrying. Out of the bath, into the wardrobe. I was even singing, too, until I recalled how awful my singing is, and stopped. I stopped again, briefly, when I had put on green lingerie and a green dress, to look at my wide hips. I don’t really like being a Venus Media type. Once, when Clovis was drunk, he told me I had a boyish look. “But I’m a Venus Media.” Clovis had shrugged. It’s possibly my face, which is almost oval, but has a pointed chin with an infinitesimal cleft—like that of a tom-cat?
I tried to put up my hair myself, but despaired, and combed it down again. I made up, using all the creams and powders and shadows and heightenings and mascaras and rouges and glosses. Until I looked much older and more confident. Sometimes I’ve been told I’m pretty or attractive, but I’m never sure. I wish I were someone else really.
I got the automatic on the phone to fetch another cab, and at nine P.M. I drove back into the city, which I think is amazing by night. The buildings seem made of thousands of little cubes of light that go up and up into the darkness. In the distance, they look like sticks of diamante. But I expect that’s a bad analogy. The jewelry traffic goes by on the roads, and clatters past overhead, punching out rosy fumes. I felt excited. I was glad I’d come back.
I felt at least twenty-five as I paid off the cab, and stepped on the moving stair that flows into Babylon, among the hanging mosses and garlands lit to liquid emeralds by the neons under the foliage.
The autumn night was soft. The lights in the bushes melted in the softness, and were only hard where they streamed out from under the canopies with the hard music of orchestras and stereophonics. Under the Theatra-Egyptia canopy, the light was hardest of all, but that may only have been the hard, beautiful makeup everyone was wearing.
I stood at the brink of the light and saw Egyptia in sequins dancing the snake dance with a thin handsome man among other couples doing the same. People and bottles were strewn thickly on the grass and currents of blue smoke went through the air. It was the sort of party Clovis liked a lot, because he could be so terribly, cuttingly rude about it.
Someone came up to me, a man about twenty-one, and said, “Well who are you?”
“My name is Jane. I’m a friend of Egyptia’s.”
“I didn’t know she had any friends. Why not be my friend instead, then you can come in.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh, don’t thank me.” He looked at my dress, which is pre-Asteroid Asian silk. There isn’t a thing in my wardrobe I can put on which isn’t expensive and doesn’t look it. “Sweet little rich girl,” said the young man, who was good-looking and nasty. “Would you like an interview for the drama, too?”
“I can’t act.”
“Everyone can act. We spend our lives acting.”
“Not on a stage.”
“Theatra Concordacis can’t afford a stage. We put tables together.”
He was probably joking, and I didn’t know what to say. I’m a failure as a wit, too.
He led me by the hand—his hand was dry but limp—under the canopy, and told me his name was Lord. He poured a glass of fizzy greenish wine and gave it to me and kissed me on the lips as he did so. If I say that to be kissed by men, even passionately with the mouth open, bores me, it sounds like a silly attempt to be blasé. But it’s true. I’ve tried to get interested, but I never can. Nothing happens, except sometimes a faraway sensation that I always hope will become pleasant but is really only like a vague itch somewhere under my skin. So I shrank back from the young man called Lord, and he said, “How fascinating. You’re shy.” And I blushed, and I was glad that my makeup hid it. But I didn’t feel twenty-five anymore. I felt about eleven, and already I wanted to leave.
Then the snake dance ended as there was an interval on the rhythm tape. I wondered if Egyptia would see me and come over, or pretend she hadn’t seen me and not come over. But she seemed very interested in her partner, and truly didn’t see me. She looked so exotic. I sipped my icy wine and wished very much that she’d be a wonderful success at the Theatra. Her eyes shone. She had forgotten about comets crashing on the earth.
“Oh, no more rhythm, per-leez,” someone called. “I’ve been waiting all evening to hear these songs. Do they exist? Am I at the wrong party?”
Other voices joined in, with various clever, existentialist comments.
I tensed for a song tape to be put on, probably raucous. But a lot of people were surging across the open space where the dancers had been, waving glasses.
“Improvisation!” somebody else yelled. Mostly they were rather high. I was envious. Another failure. I find it difficult to smoke, the vapor refusing to sink below my throat into my lungs. It’s very awkward. I have to pretend to be high, usually, when I’m not. (We spend our lives acting.)
Then another rhythm tape, or the same one, came on. Then, after four beats, the song came. Of course, rhythm has no melody, just the percussion and the beat, for dancing. I’ve heard people improvise tunes or songs over it before; Clovis is quite good at this, but the songs are always obscene. This song was savage, the words like fireworks—but they dashed away from me, while the chords of a guitar came up from the ground, resonating, and hung in the hollows of my bones, trapped there. Almost everybody was quiet so they could listen. But Lord-who-had-kissed-me said, “It sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Better than I’d have thought. Have you seen it yet? It’s awfully effective. Come on, I’ll show you.”
I was thinking, Who is singing like that? But I said to Lord: “No, I don’t want to.”
So I knew.