does petit point chair seats, and is also, if you'll believe me, a noted big-game hunter. As for the Clandugalds, hoot mon, and also oy oy! What did I tell you about the music stopping? Now Ralph knows I was talking about him."
Joe looked at Evelyn Thorne, sitting on the wall seat by Ralph Levinson, her beautiful painted mouth smiling at something he had just said to her. She was the only person in the hot noisy room who looked cool and relaxed, with her white skin, her blue eyes with shadows about them that gave her a deceptive air of delicacy, and that she slightly helped, and her silver dress like armor. Painted on the wall above their heads, a squat Oriental potentate in star-spattered turquoise robes and a towering feathered turban, raspberry-pink and wrapped in pearls, strolled under a blue-green palm tree, leading on a leash a snow-white damsel in chiffon trousers.
"Let's try eating, for a minute."
They sawed at sauce-smothered beefsteak.
"I don't seem to be making much of an impression on this. Are you?"
"You'd have to take a course under Lionel Strongfort."
"The music is the thing this place runs on. Stir the emotions, and let the tummys look out for themselves. I don't seem to be making any more of an impression on you than I am on the beefsteak. Stop looking at
