Mawrdew Czgowchwz by James McCourt Read Free Book Online Page B

Countess recounted grimly to herself the hosts of reasons for her own steadfast refusal to invite this Dolores woman into Magwyck for so much as a cup of tea. Bohemian church bells down the street rang out a chilly Angelus. Shivering, the Countess Madge reached for a thimble of whiskey.
    G-G and Trixie finished powdering at Trixie’s and went up with the Wicklow teamster in the elevator to Grace Jackson-Haight’s penthouse (for Trixie and Grace, resident at the same tony address, were by the way of being back-parlor neighbors in Gotham). The officially confirmed blizzard seemed to have swelled the ranks; thus generous Grace’s minions, most of them sneezing, were dispatched to minister to everyone without being either too casual or too obvious about checking names. The word had sped about town, at midafternoon gallery openings and holiday hat-lunches, that this was a bash to be at. Grace was feeling desired. When the bulk of the gang had settled in, wolfing down the buffet and the drinks, they set about keeping tabs, as Paranoy observed, “on one another’s joys, jeux, and bijoux.” Grace favored a lot of glitter: it seemed to make her see more. That way she developed an authentic taste. People liked her; she was cultivated, nice.
    The Baron Shmendrick, the provident diamond peddler, arrived after curtain call with a dozen-odd Broadway doxies hired for the occasion, all of them tarted up like Waldorf hookers but in the actual merchandise (and covered by security dicks like guardian angels packing rods) and all looking, as Paranoy reported, “painfully like naked trees in hibernal Tiffany windows—drenched in alien tinsel.” There they all stood in Valentine-bodice taffeta décolleté, none of them young, really. Dolly Farouche, the society chanteuse and now-and-then Rialto star, whose modest diamond earbobs were her own to wear, stood aside slapping pâté lapin on a Ry-Krisp when Thalia Bridgewood whispered thickly from across the buffet, “Ever see so much diamond dust in one room , dahling?” Dolly swung around, biting into her canapé, pulled one earbob off, and held it out, snapping acidly, “Whaddya think these the fuck are, Bridgewood— chicken livers !?” It was that sort of occasion.
    Rotten Rodney Bergamot sauntered into the foyer in playful high spirits. Had he not just come from his publisher with the kicky news that his warmed-over Master’s thesis—a trenchant study of the life, work, anguish, and hierophantic genius of Puvis de Chavannes—would be out “this time next year,” with polychrome plates? It would consequently be being found on the best coffee tables and in book bins in the smartest toilets in Gotham by Christmas, by which time Rotten Rodney would be in the Bahamas, deserving...
    G-G and Trixie had lost track of their Wicklow trucker. G-G pointed out, “His eyes, toots, are lupine -blue!” They nursed bourbon Manhattans with their hostess, Grace, and Boni de Chalfonte at a window apart, gazing through the snow-cyclone toward the invisible East River. Boni, having done up a social-arbiter’s treatise on penthouse landscaping as an urban ecological duty, was trying off and on to sell Grace on an Inca scheme for spring. G-G avowed she would prefer mazes of box hedge to terraced limestone at a height of forty stories. Boni switched to a carefully-broken-English rhapsody on the theme of their city (out there) as Atlantis in a glass ball, with snow whirling “a silent, incessant concerto.” Trixie farted absently. Grace, yawning, signaled a butler for more sauce. Trixie saw Dolly Farouche’s other earbob fall into the blancmange across the room. The solstice drew on. Rotten Rodney Bergamot guffawed, plunging a fist into the same blancmange. Dolly slapped his mocking face. Boni de Chalfonte, bounding entrechats the length of the living room, intervened judiciously to prevent a slapstick incident,