"What about Ranna?"
"I finally told him I didn't love him and that I knew I wouldn't be happy working with him even though I admired his work. He went to Boston. He's opening a school with Mrs. Custerd's help."
They looked at each other and laughed.
"Boston always was famous for importing spices from the Orient," Vida said.
"Well," Lucy said, "maybe those girls up there won't care if he doesn't feel like working. He sure is an artist at that. Which reminds me. You should see Demora—remember, she's the one with the long black hair Ranna was fascinated with. She's given up show business. She has a rich old boy friend who bought her a house in the Seventies between Madison and Park. She clinks with diamonds and is very rough-feened."
They used their lipsticks and lighted Lucy's gold-tipped perfumed cigarettes.
Lucy pushed aside her cake and leaned on the table. "If I want to be rich I'll have to earn it myself. Figente is right, I'm no good at getting things from men."
Getting things from men had been something Lucy always had resisted. The fact that she even thought of it was evidence of a kind of abscess poisoning Lucy's spirit, eating away at it into this state of melancholy indecision. It could not be the Horta party alone, something more wounding must have happened. But what? wondered Vida depressed.
"I must tell you something else," Lucy said as they pulled on their coats. "Remember Lois who was always disappearing during rehearsals? Well, she went to Rambouillet this summer to study with Pergov. I ran into her about two weeks ago. She said she nearly died. You know how lazy she is. Well, he made her walk to the market every day, three miles each way, besides carrying two heavy baskets, and if she didn't keep up to his time schedule she had to sleep on the ground without a mosquito net all night. She said the worst of it was she could never see him alone, so she went to Paris and had a big two weeks with a man she met on the boat going over and came home dead broke. But then, you know, Lois was always flighty. She wouldn't know how to be serious about learning discipline."
"Me neither, that way," Vida asserted.
"You may think it's funny but I think it was Lois's fault that she didn't get anything out of Pergov. Ilona learned a lot from that demonstration. I saw one of her boys, Teddy, in my agent's office
