"No, but perhaps Mr. Vermillion has. It would be interesting to learn what he thinks of Blanc's experiments."
Vermillion glanced in Semy's direction. "I try not to remember, and it's easy. He can integrate, as the now sacred word has it, attune himself without tune, rhyme, or reason, without the use of my ears."
"I can see you have the old-fashioned sentimental viewpoint about music," grumbled Vent.
Semy raised his arms to simulate a violinist and sang the second movement theme of the "Pathétique" da-da-da in a pleasant tenor. "Tchaikovsky makes me sick with his sentimental onanistic orgasms," he ended up.
"Are you," asked Vermillion, "an expert in such practices that you recognize the symptoms?" And went to help himself to some Calvados.
"That's right, Paul, you tell him," Lucy trilled delightedly as Semy reddened.
"Now, Vermillion, there's no call to get personal," Clem protested.
Vermillion sipped the Calvados. The bittersweet distillation evoked the pink-tipped apple breasts of Marie and her soursweet odor when she had brought Simone and him morning coffee during a week in a Normandy inn. Simone and he had lazed in a snow of fragrant blossoms under the upstretched ardent branches of an old knotted apple tree and he had made the mistake of drawing plump Marie as she bent over the willow-edged creek. At first he had thought it funny that Simone was jealous—it was their second year—but then when she left for Paris in a huff, he refused to go with her. Marie's giggle was the fat burble of a spring. She tiptoed softly in stocking feet because hinges and fruitwood floorboards creak. But not, as she had pointed out, feather beds. He took another long sip. Beside him apple blossoms were forming into two upturned breasts and he was being watched by two enormous solemn blue eyes.
I'm drunk, he thought, and bent over and carefully kissed a fragrant eyebrow.
"You're tight!" Lucy said happily.
A chorus of grinning false faces stared and wished they were elsewhere.
Vida drew in her breath sharply. He doesn't mean a thing, it's a natural reaction to that abandoned pose of hers.
Lucy examined his hand resting on her navel. "You have a pretty hand, with your fingers together it looks like an elm leaf."
