“Uh-uh. Definitely.” Eloise yawned. “I was almost in the room with her when she dyed it. What’s the matter? Aren’t there any cigarettes in there?”
“It’s all right. I have a whole pack,” Mary Jane said. “Somewhere.” She searched through her handbag.
“That dopey maid,” Eloise said without moving from the couch. “I dropped two brand-new cartons in front of her nose about an hour ago. She’ll be in, any minute, to ask me what to do with them. Where the hell was I?”
“Thieringer,” Mary Jane prompted, lighting one of her own cigarettes.
“Oh, yeah. I remember exactly. She dyed it the night before she married that Frank Henke. You remember him at all?”
“Just sort of. Little ole private? Terribly unattractive?”
“Unattractive. God! He looked like an unwashed Bela Lugosi.”
Mary Jane threw back her head and roared. “Marvellous,” she said, coming back into drinking position.
“Gimme your glass,” Eloise said, swinging her stockinged feet to the floor and standing up. “Honestly, that dope. I did everything but get Lew to make love to her to get her to come out here with us. Now I’m sorry I—Where’d you get that thing?”
“This?” said Mary Jane, touching a cameo brooch at her throat. “I had it at school, for goodness sake. It was Mother’s.”
“God,” Eloise said, with the empty glasses in her hands. “I don’t have one damn thing holy to wear. If Lew’s mother ever dies—ha, ha—she’ll probably leave me some old monogrammed icepick or something.”
“How’re you getting along with her these days, anyway?”
“Don’t be funny,” Eloise said on her way to the kitchen.
“This is positively the last one for me!” Mary Jane called after her.
“Like hell it is. Who called who? And who came two hours late? You’re gonna stick around till I’m sick of you. The hell with your lousy career.”
Mary Jane threw back her head and roared again, but Eloise had already gone into the kitchen.
With little or no wherewithal for being left alone in a room, Mary Jane stood up and walked over to the window. She drew aside the curtain and leaned her wrist on one of the crosspieces between panes, but, feeling grit, she removed it, rubbed it clean with her other hand, and stood up more erectly. Outside, the filthy slush was visibly turning to ice. Mary Jane let go the curtain and wandered back to the blue chair, passing two heavily stocked bookcases without glancing at any of the titles. Seated, she opened her handbag and used the mirror to look at her teeth. She closed her lips and ran her tongue hard over her upper front teeth, then took another look.
“It’s getting so icy out,” she said, turning. “God, that was quick. Didn’t you put
any soda in them?”
Eloise, with a fresh drink in each hand, stopped short. She extended both index fingers, gun-muzzle style, and said, “Don’t nobody move. I got the whole damn place surrounded.”
Mary Jane laughed and put away her mirror.
Eloise came forward with the drinks. She placed Mary Jane’s insecurely in its coaster but kept her own in hand. She stretched out on the couch again. “Wuddaya think she’s doing out there?” she said. “She’s sitting on her big, black butt reading ‘The Robe.’ I dropped the ice trays taking them out. She actually looked up annoyed.”
“This is my last. And I mean it,” Mary Jane said, picking up her drink. “Oh, listen! You know who I saw last week? On the main floor of Lord & Taylor’s?”
“Mm-hm,” said Eloise, adjusting a pillow under her head. “Akim Tamiroff.”
“Who?” said Mary Jane. “Who’s he?”
“Akim Tamiroff. He’s in the movies. He always says, ‘You make beeg joke—hah?’ I love him. . . . There isn’t one damn pillow in this house that I can stand. Who’d you see?”
“Jackson. She was—”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know. The one that was in our Psych class, that always—”
“Both of them were in our Psych class.”