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  Starr gathered them all jealously to his bosom, spilling better than half. “If you please, Monica, this is something that concerns only Mr. Dennis and me.”

  Lady Joyce picked up a paper that had fallen to the ground. “Hmm. Kilgour, French & Stanbury. ‘Dear Mr. Starr,’” she read. “‘We must now press for settlement of the enclosed greatly overdue account amounting to . . .’”

  “The other side, you dense cockney!” Starr snapped.

  “Oh, yes. ‘Shooting. First day: Exteriors hacienda. Pedro, Don Jaime, Pilar and extras, cornfields . . .’”

  “Give that to me,” Starr said, snatching it from her. “There’s nothing there that would interest you at all. Now, my dear, what can I offer you to drink?”

  “Gin and lime, I think, Leander.”

  “That sounds good,” my wife said.

  There was nothing on the table but rum and only about an inch of that. “Dear Dennis,” Starr said. “We seem to be out of gin. Have you a drop in your diggings? Also lime and ice. And if you should have any Scotch, some bourbon, perhaps a dash more rum?” I got up to raid my own supply of liquor. “Now, ladies,” he continued suavely, “let’s not waste valuable time talking about this stupid picture. Besides, it’s just a silly little spur-of-the-moment thing to be done locally next week. No more than charades in the attic, ac-tually. Now tell me, what interesting things have you done today? Shopping?”

  By the time I had done battle with the ice trays and collected bottles and glasses and limes and soda, Lady Joyce was leaning forward in her chair, gazing spellbound at Starr. “And is it to be one of these wide-screen, glorious-color, cast-of-thousands affairs, Leander?”

  “Certainly not, my dear. That kind of crap is too big for this picture, and I’m too big for it. Valley of the Vultures is to be one tiny, perfect gem of despair in pure black and white. Chiaroscuro. A black as black as the rich soil of a century ago, a white as white as the dust of today. Ah, here come the reinforcements. Do let me mix something for you.”

  “Patrick can do all that,” my wife said. “Go on, please.”

  “Yes, Leander,” Lady Joyce said.

  “Oh no. I don’t want to bore you with this trivia. Too bad I didn’t think of it twenty years ago, Monica. There’s a part in this—Doña Ana—that would have fitted you like your skin. Well, I suppose we could get someone like Diana Dors to play it.”

  “Diana Dors?” Lady Joyce said indignantly. “Well, really Leander!”

  “Beggars can’t be choosers, Monica. Was it my fault that you abandoned the boards for Burke’s Peerage? Howsomever, you have retired and probably for the best.”

  “Well, it was hardly enforced retirement, Leander. I suppose I always could go back if the role interested me.”

  “Oh come now, Monica, with a boy in college—a baronet in his own right. How would he feel to see his poor old mum cavorting across the screen in a low-budget Mexican art film?”

  “Well, Leander dear, it’s not exactly as though I’d chosen to resume a career as a stripper in Soho. I mean there are films and films. It might be rather a lark, and one does get bored sitting about and listening to Bunty’s chatter all day.”

  “It would pay nothing, Monica, literally nothing. No, Monica, it’s just not your sort of thing. It might have been fun, but . . .”

  “Well, Leander, if you really can’t find anyone suitable down here and think that you might trust me to handle a very small role . . .”

  “We’ll discuss it at some other time, my dear. Gin and lime I believe you said?” While Lady Joyce was scrutinizing her face in her mirror, searching for little telltale lines, Starr tipped me a prodigious wink. Even I knew that the old charlatan had her in the bag.

  Everyone except Lady Joyce had begun talking about other things, when our little gathering was joined by Emily and Just-call-me-Bruce van Damm. I must say that they made a handsome couple, and Emily seemed to have a good bit more bounce than heretofore. She was looking very much the all-American, Lord & Taylor girl (Bala Cynwyd branch), while he was very brown and toothy and cashmere jackety. They reminded me a little of those idealized illustrations of the young lovers in the magazine I was trying to write for. Emily was duly introduced to Lady Joyce, and Bruce went just a bit too far by bowing low over her ladyship’s hand. I told myself with a malicious satisfaction that he couldn’t have spent much time in higher English circles. Drinks were made—by me—while Lady Joyce went into well-bred raptures over the beauty, charm, and grace of Emily.

  “Good heavens, Leander, this young beauty is your daughter? It’s incredible. Your mother must be very lovely, my dear.” Starr shuddered. So did I.

  Then to get the conversation to less painful topics Starr took over. “Well, child, what did you do today? See sights? Pyramids, museums, cathedrals, monasteries?”

  “Oh no, Daddy. Bruce took me to lunch. It was a heavenly place with a garden. What was the name of it, Bruce?” She cast him a look of the sheerest devotion.

  “I—I don’t remember, Emily,” he said. But he exchanged the same rapt look, and the plain old Emily sounded more like a caress.

  “And then Bruce showed me his apartment. Oh, it’s wonderful!” My eyebrows shot up. It did seem to me that a bien elevée young lady from Philadelphia’s finest just didn’t go prancing up to the apartment of a man she’d met for the first time. Then I decided that I had a dirty mind.

  “Oh, it’s just a place to hang my hat,” Bruce said magnanimously. “Like my little hole in the wall in Gracie Square. That’s what I call home back in New York. I always live in crazy places.” Crazy they may have been, but I noticed that on either side of the border they never happened to be located in neighborhoods that were what sociologists describe as “depressed.”

  The conversation was steady but scattered. Lady Joyce kept her eye rather beadily on Starr, while Emily trained her gaze on Lady Joyce and Bruce stared almost exclusively upon Emily. That left nobody for me to look at but my wife, and as we’d been seeing each other for some years, I looked into my drink and wondered just when I’d have time to finish that mawkish magazine story.

  Suddenly we were interrupted by a loud “Woo-hoo!” and everybody gave up gazing at one another and stared at the entrance of the patio. And well they might. There stood Mrs. Worthington Pomeroy dressed to kill. Built along the lines of a pouter pigeon, Clarice was got up in a sheer dress of colors my grandmother used to describe as “pigeon’s breast,” busy with beadwork and stoles and floating panels. She was wearing all of her bracelets today, along with an immense flowered hat, clear plastic pumps, and a plastic bag into which many innocent butterflies had been laminated. One could see through it, and I was casually able to observe a gold-and-ruby cigarette case, lighter to match, a book of Wonderlax matches (in case the lighter failed), a soiled handkerchief, a Benzedrex inhaler, a dirty comb, some eyedrops, and quite a lot of other accoutrements of Clarice’s eternal allure.

  “Hello, neighbors! Woo hoo hoo. You’ll never guess what I’ve been doing all day.”

  “Molesting native children?” Starr suggested.

  “Woo hoo hoo! No! I’ve been house hunting and I’ve finally taken the Casa Ortiz-Robledo. It’s simply dee-vine and it’s just around the corner!” How right she was. The place was an ancient pile bigger even than Casa Ximinez. “And that’s why I just bursted in: to tell you that my party tonight has been moved. Woo hoo hoo! I tried to telephone you, Paddy, but I couldn’t find you in the Anglo-American Directory.”

  “That’s because we’re not in it,” my wife said.

  “Or even in the phone book.”

  “We don’t have a telephone,” I said. As a judgment our telephone started ringing. I knew it would go on ringing until Guadalupe stopped eating and waddled off to answer it.

  “Well, I just came around to tell you that I’m already moved inta my colonial mansion, so that’s where my party will be tonight. Shall I send the car for you?”

  “As it’s fifty paces from here, you’ll
hardly need to,” I said. Then I noticed her looking with increasing curiosity at Lady Joyce, and I decided I’d better do the big thing—if nobody else would—and make a few introductions. “Lady Joyce,” I said, “this is Mrs. Pomeroy.”

  “Oh, say, aren’t you a pal of my dear friend, the Duchess of Gault?”

  “I’ve met her,” Lady Joyce said.

  “Well, I do hope you’ll come to my party tonight. It’s for the new ambassador from . . .”

  “That’s very kind of you, Mrs. Pomeroy, but I’m afraid the Maitland-Grims are having some people in and I’m expected to be on hand.”

  “Bunty Maitland-Grim, sweetie?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, I wish you’d bring her. I’d love to meet her.” Mrs. Pomeroy caught my eye and then added, “Again.”

  “I’m sure she’d be very interested in meeting you, too,” Lady Joyce said, “but their people are coming quite early. In fact, I must be going along to change. Thanks ever so much. Good-by, Leander,” she said, sadistically kissing the little bald patch on the crown of his head. The gesture was lost on neither Emily nor Clarice. “Do call me about . . . about what we were discussing. I might be interested. Thank you and good-by.” With that she was gone.

  “And Emmy, I hope you’ll bring yer boy friend. I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure?”

  “Mrs. Pomeroy,” I said, “this is Mr. van Damm.”

  “Just call me Bruce,” he said.

  “All rightie, Bruce, if you’ll call me Clarice.”

  “That’s very nice of you, Mrs. Pomeroy,” Emily said. Once again her voice had taken on that chill, disapproving tone. “But . . .”

  “We’d love to,” Bruce said with a sincere grin.

  “Dee-vine. Anytime after eight. Well, good-by now. I’ve gotta get home and get all dressed up.” She pranced out of the patio, her fat little feet bulging over the vamps of her plastic slippers.

  “Get dressed up?” my wife said.

  “Daddy,” Emily said a bit petulantly, “must we?”

  “Yes, my darling daughter,” Starr said wearily. “We must. At least I must.”

  Clarice’s cocktail party in the grandiose Casa Ortiz-Robledo was interesting only in a clinical way. The ambassador and his lady did not show up. In fact, I soon got to notice that to be one of Mrs. Worthington Pomeroy’s guests of honor was an almost sure way to achieve a cold, a virus, a stomach upset, a pressing business engagement, or an urgent trip out of town about an hour before the festivities commenced. What did show up was Mrs. P’s usual ragtag and bobtail of international riffraff. The titles from Georgia, Montenegro, Ruthenia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and other defunct countries had turned out in full force. In addition there were Clarice’s rich—the dull rich, the vulgar rich, the rich who were dull and vulgar. Most of their names were attached to oil or manufacturing, to chain stores or discount houses, to well-known brands of packaged foods or patent medicines. If you could not make the commercial connection immediately, it didn’t matter, because Clarice was always on hand to supply the complete rundown on exactly who one was and what one did. Rounding out the jolly throng were the old Mexico City hands—the nonacting starlets, the nonwriting writers, the nonpainting painters, the drifters and grifters and con men and remittance men who would go any place where the food and liquor were free. It was the sort of crowd that made you feel absolutely certain that someone would be pushed into the swimming pool before too long.

  Clarice was wearing a scarlet-lamé dress with a fringe skirt (“Stick around, sweetie, we’re all going to twist later”), an ugly diamond-and-ruby necklace that accentuated the shortness and thickness of her neck, and all of the bracelets. As a final fillip, she had put on a platinum-blond wig, arranged in the tangled fashion of the moment. I can only suppose that the effect she was striving for was one of sheer, youthful glamour. But all that the skittish pile of white hair did was to make her look like a very bawdy old lady.

  Although taking up residence only a few hours ago, Clarice was very much in command of the enormous house. There were two bars, circulating maids and waiters, an endless table piled high with that inedible party food (although I could have told her that some of her guests would eat anything—were, in fact, counting on her dabs of crab and cheese and caviar and you-name-it as substitutes for dinner). A mariachi band in dusty ruffles played in the patio.

  We arrived with Starr and Emily and Bruce about nine, and one look at the assembly made us feel drastically underdressed but indescribably tasteful. Emily’s jaw dropped when she saw the crowd gathered in the huge, beamed drawing room that had been built for grandees and their ladies. “Just like the Philadelphia Assembly, isn’t it?” I said. She giggled and squeezed Bruce’s arm.

  Clarice leaped like a seal at feeding time when she saw the conservative element—so to speak—standing in the doorway, and it wasn’t long before we had been introduced—with business, social, and family (if any) connections catalogued—to half a dozen poisonous people. My wife and I were allowed to drift by ourselves among a horde of old harpies, each of whom told me explicitly that she was the original Auntie Mame. Starr naturally got detached from us and very firmly attached to Mrs. Pomeroy, who clung to his black-silk sleeve as though she were going to be swept away. From every part of the great room I could hear her, the joyless laugh, which punctuated nearly every sentence, resounding like a trumpet voluntary. “An’ I wantcha ta meet the famous pitcher director Leander Starr, an’ this is his cute little day-butante daughter from Philadelphia, an’ this is Mr. Bruce van Damm. Woo hoo hoo!”

  “One hour,” I muttered to my wife, “and then cut for home.”

  “Must we stay that long?”

  Through the noise and the smoke and the crowds I kept watching Starr. When it came to the social graces, he certainly had them. Even in this throng of flamboyantly overdone ignoramuses, he stood out in his anonymous black suit and string tie. Even people who had never heard the name Leander Starr (for this set didn’t give one the impression that they were great patrons of the arts) seemed to realize that he was Somebody. Women fawned on him. Men looked nervously, enviously, suspiciously at him and then consulted one another as to who and what he might be behind hammy, glassy-nailed hands. This was his first public appearance since he had arrived in Mexico, and he was really mowing them down.

  After what seemed the equivalent of a summer in St. Louis, our hour was up. “Now,” I said to my wife. “And don’t stand on one foot and then the other making your farewells. A simple ‘thank you’ and ‘good-by’ will be sufficient.”

  “Don’t worry,” she said.

  We fought our way across the room to where Clarice, still clinging to Starr, was explaining the charm, wealth, and chicté of a couple who were very big in plumbing, and we bade our adieux. “Oh, don’t leave yet, sweetie,” Mrs. Pomeroy said, grasping my free arm with her free claw. “We’re all going to twist.”

  “Well, not quite all of us,” I said. “I have to be up very early in the morning.” I didn’t.

  “Indeed you do, darling boy,” Starr said. “For tomorrow you and I are going to call on Aristido González”

  “Oh, are we?”

  “Yes, dear boy.”

  “Daddy,” Emily interjected. Once again, and against my will, I began finding Emily self-righteous, cloying, and tiresome. “Daddy, couldn’t we all go?”

  “You may, my dear. Mr. and Mrs. Dennis will see you home, I’m sure. I will have to stay for a bit.”

  “But, Daddy . . .” I could have slapped her. Had the girl no idea what her father was suffering, what he was up against? Well, no. Naturally, of course, she hadn’t. Nor could she conceive of any such thing in her neatly ordered orderly life.

  “I say no, child. Mr. and Mrs. Dennis will see you home if you’re that anxious to go.”

  “Bruce is here, Daddy. He’ll take care of me.”

  “Blessings on you child. Hasta mañana.” He pecked her forehead chastely.

  The four of us walk
ed home together, my wife and I sedately leading the procession.

  Some hours later, unable to sleep, I was found at our bedroom window by my wife. “What are you up to?” she asked gently.

  “Just enjoying a view of the patio, dear heart,” I said.

  “What are you, some kind of nut or something?”

  “Be still, love, you’re disturbing them.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, put on your specs, you old fool. Them. The fair Emily and Just-call-me-Bruce.”

  She did, and then she gasped. “You filthy old voyeur,” she said, “you are getting on!”

  “Well, at least I can see with the naked eye the naked . . .”

  “You come back to bed this instant, or I’ll report you to the . . .”

  “I ought to report them to the . . .”

  “You have a filthy, evil, depraved, sick mind. Mother always said so.”

  “I don’t know what your mother would know about it unless she, too, is a filthy, evil, depraved, sick . . .”

  “Oh, be still! They’re just young, innocent lovers—the two of them—while you’re a vile old married . . .”

  “I grant you, my dear,” I said with dignity, “that I am vile and old and married. But I beg to differ with you when you say that they—or at least he—is the unshorn lamb you like to imagine. I say—and I am a voice bleating in the wilderness—that he is a thoroughgoing . . .”

  “And I say that you are a drunk, bleating in the wilderness. Come to bed.”

  I did and that was that.

  IX

  Having had trouble getting to sleep the night before, I had even more trouble waking up the following morning. It was past ten when I was aroused by Starr’s pounding on the bedroom door. In my frenzy to scramble out of bed, I knocked over the omnipresent breakfast tray with a crash. I said an ugly word, stepped into a shattered cup, said a still uglier one, threw a robe around myself, and opened the door to Starr. He was dressed for a guards’ luncheon or a conference in Downing Street—stiff collar, bowler, gloves, and a smartly furled umbrella, although the first drop of rain was still a good two months off.