“The girl in the red dress — she’s good-looking...”
“What girl?”
“The one you’re watching.” Tommy paused. “Or is it the man?” Tommy had crowded her too far. She gave him a withering look and walked off. Tommy watched her clear across the room, saw her accosted by Willis Trent and not become aware of it until she had passed him a couple of paces, when she stopped and attempted an apologetic smile.
Tommy lit a cigarette and when a waiter came near took another drink. Smouldering, he sipped at his liquor and cursed himself, first, for coming up here and second, for remaining. Yet there was nothing to keep him here. He’d had the drink, and more, that Trent had asked him to have. He could go; except that he had talked to her and had been rebuffed.
Footsteps slithered on the cement of the terrace and a whiff of Chanel No. 5, although Tommy did not know it for that, assailed his nostrils. He turned and the girl in the red dress came into the room. Burnished copper hair and a heavily tanned skin went well with the red dress. Her liptsick matched it, too, except that it was smeared.
“Excuse me,” Tommy said, “but your lipstick is slipping.”
She stopped, looked at Tommy coolly and opened a compact. She looked at her lips, said, “Thanks,” and began repairing the damage. As she worked her eyes suddenly raised from the little mirror and met Tommy’s. “Do I know you?”
“I’m willing.”
“Get me a drink.”
The man with whom she had been on the terrace appeared behind her. He was tall, lean and swarthy. There was a good fifteen or twenty cents’ worth of pomade on his hair. There was possessiveness in the way he took hold of the girl’s elbow. “Let’s beat it.”
The girl continued to make up her lips. “I just got here.”
At that moment the waiter came within signaling distance and Tommy summoned him. He replaced his empty glass on the tray took down two filled ones. He handed one to the girl in the red dress.
“Here you are.”
She flashed him a smile. “You saved my life.” Then she looked over her shoulder at the swarthy man. “By the way, have you two met? Mr. Faraday... Mr...?” She snapped her fingers.
“Dancer.”
She smiled at Tommy. “Of course. Mr. Dancer, Mr. Faraday.”
The man with the pomaded hair looked at Tommy from under lowered eyebrows. “How are you?” He did not extend his hand.
Tommy nodded. “Har’ya.”
That should have ended the dialogue between Tommy and the other man, except that something within Tommy, probably the four or was it five? drinks urged him on. He said to the girl: “I didn’t set
“Oh, didn’t you? How careless of you, Earl.” She looked at Faraday.
But Faraday wasn’t in the mood. He pressed forward on her elbow. “Come on.”
Tommy stepped into the girl’s path, touched the wrist of the hand that held the compact, the one that wasn’t being gripped at the moment by Faraday.
“Did you come with anybody?” he asked.
It was quite obvious that the girl was striking a match in the presence of a powder keg, but she gave Tommy a slow, tantalizing smile and said:
“The name is Flo... Florence Randall, if you want to be formal. And no, I didn’t come with anybody.”
Faraday said harshly: “She’s with me.”
“How many girls can you handle?” Tommy retorted. His eyes flickered across the room toward Elizabeth Targ. The look was not wasted on Faraday.
His eyes followed Tommy’s, came back. “Look, sonny,” he said, “I don’t know who the hell you are, but if you’re trying to pick a fight with me you’re going about it the right way.”
“I never backed out of a fight yet,” Tommy challenged him.
Willis Trent came up from behind Tommy, and stopped so that his back was to him. He addressed Faraday: “Hello, Earl. Just get here?”
“I been here long enough,” retorted Faraday.
“Like to have a talk with you,” Trent said, “if you’ve got a minute or two.”
Faraday hesitated, glowering. Then he shrugged. “All right.” He turned and stepped out to the terrace. Trent followed.
Flo Randall said to Tommy: “Fun’s fun, but Earl Faraday isn’t fun, if you know what I mean.”
“Bad medicine?”
“Mmmm.”
Tommy laid his hand on the girl’s wrist. “Mustn’t touch?”
She did not draw her hand away, but her eyes went across the room to Elizabeth Targ. “You were needling Earl.” She nodded in Elizabeth’s direction. “You know her?”
“No, but I’d like to.”
The girl looked at Tommy, shook her head. She walked off, leaving Tommy alone.
Tommy stood for a moment, holding his glass. Trent and Faraday were out on the terrace. Flo Randall had left him. Elizabeth Targ seemed to be carrying on an animated conversation with a short, heavy-set man in a loud sport coat. Tommy’s vision was more than a little hazy from the drinks he had tossed off so rapidly. He felt uncomfortably warm and more than a little nauseated. He’d mixed it with the other kind and he had not come off too well. But he had a twenty dollar bill in his pocket, no, a twenty and a ten, which was more money than he was accustomed to having so late in the week.
