Everyone would get drunker. Women with their avid painted faces would be more raucous than the men, jerking in a St. Vitus dance to Dixie Land Jazz, their speech limited to "You slay me." What a spectacle a fastidious man like Kevin Doyle, a fine writer, was making of himself. High as a kite when he had come, he was now "integrating" in a corner with Nick Allwood's collaborating redheaded niece who was "coming out" next week at the Athenée party which would cost her father at least fifty thousand. Vedder never would be asked again for bringing crashers, and yokels at that. In Syosset by this time he could have pleaded a headache, except then how could he keep track of Hal? The naughty boy had played beautifully but was probably pouting because Simone hadn't heard him. Just as well. Where were Simone and Vermillion? Oh yes, her last show was at one. The tableaux had not been bad. Not spectacular, but wasted nevertheless. Was it New York or this lunatic age that made it impossible to give a party with prewar style? Gone was elegance. Angles, planes, and thick forms were all very well in painting, but women had no justification for inflicting their physical defects, and revolting curved excrescences, upon unprotected public gaze. Lucy was right about the straw, the women looked like blowsy scarecrows and the room a shambles. What nonsense had that buffoon Cynski up his sleeve?
"Denis, when Cynski is finished, have Blake and the other fellow get rid of the straw before the band starts."
"Please, please, to be quite everybody," Cynski was still begging, though his wild gesticulations finally were having a silencing effect. Holding aloft a tobacco-stained finger he began portentously. "Today we are in world of future where all must speak Universal Langidge."
"He and Ilona ought to get together," Lucy murmured to Vida.
"This langidge I have created. It is based on fundamentals of human intercourse. For this occasion I have written play in which I, as human race, have discovered significance of ultraviolet ray through Freudian dream. My new langidge you will easy understand if you take care not to think. Thought is poison of intellect, the stoppage, what you say, the constipation against art. I begin."
He paused and his audience tittered uneasily. Figente glared.
"I wonder whether Cynski is the great artist and philosopher Ilona said she met recently?" Vida whispered to Lucy.
The painter took from his pocket a white disc attached to the end
