Read Let Me Tell You for Free Online Page B

it’s undignified to sit on my lap.”
    Mrs. Carrington said quickly, “But what about this celebration? I propose that all of us go out somewhere to dinner, wherever Alice wants to go.”
    “I want to go to the Arabian Nights,” Alice said, quickly. Everyone looked at her, and she blushed.
    “What on earth?” her father said. He turned Alice’s face around. “Why do you want to go there?”
    Mr. Carrington was trying very hard not to laugh. “I don’t blame her,” he said. “I’d like to go there myself. Always did want to.”
    Alice held her breath. The Arabian Nights was a very big, very noisy, very famous nightclub; if she went there for dinner she could wear her new bracelet and her nail polish.
    Alice’s mother was laughing too. “She must have heard Jamie talking.”
    “I always wanted to go there,” Alice said to Mr. Carrington.
    “If that’s where you want to have your birthday celebration,” Mr. Carrington said. “Only there must be places you’d
rather
go?”
    “Nowhere else,” Alice said breathlessly. “I’ve been reading about it and hearing about it for a long time.”
    Mr. Carrington looked at Alice’s father, and Alice’s father nodded. Then Mr. Carrington looked at Alice’s mother, and she hesitated, and then shrugged and smiled at Mrs. Carrington. Then Mr. Carrington turned to Alice. “I guess that’s it, then, Alice,” he said. “Shall I phone for a reservation?”
    “Wear your blue dress,” Alice’s mother said, “and the bracelet your father gave you.”
    —
    Alice sat between her father and Mr. Carrington with her nails shiny and pink beyond the bracelet, in the lavishly decorated Arabian Nights, at a table that had been especially reserved. She sat with her elbow on the edge of the table, and her chin in her hand, with her shoulders pulled tight together, and she looked disdainfully at the people sitting nearby. They’re just like everyone else, she thought; I’m not afraid of any of them. When everyone had a drink—Mr. Carrington had ordered a glass of sherry for Alice—she picked it up and took a sip from it just like everyone else, and she watched how her mother toyed with the stem of her glass, and did the same thing. Seen through the glass, her fingers were long and thin.
    When the floor show started, Alice had just begun her soup; her father and Mr. Carrington ate right on through in the almost-darkness and so did she. It’s canned tomato soup, like at home, she thought with surprise. They were sitting very close to the stage, and everyone had taken care that Alice should sit where she could see everything. The comedians embarrassed her because it was necessary for her to pretend not to understand them when she saw her mother glance at her and then tighten her lips to keep from smiling. Her father and Mr. Carrington were watching her too, and she was proud when she realized she was acting exactly like everyone else. The dancers delighted her; one of them came down to the edge of the stage with a bowlful of gardenias to throw to the audience, and he saw Alice and tossed her one.
    “We should have thought to get her some flowers,” Mr. Carrington said as he pinned the gardenia onto Alice’s shoulder.
    Intermission arrived just in time for Alice to eat her steak. The lights all went on again, and everyone turned to Alice at once and began to talk.
    “Do you like the show?” her mother said.
    “How are you enjoying yourself?” Mr. Carrington asked.
    “Want to go home yet?” her father said.
    “You look very pretty, Alice,” Mrs. Carrington said. Alice looked around at everyone and said: “I’m having a wonderful time. Everything’s wonderful.”
    “Cigarette?” Mr. Carrington said to Alice very solemnly. Alice looked at her mother, and her mother shook her head. I suppose I can’t have everything, Alice thought. “No, thank you,” she said to Mr. Carrington. “I don’t smoke.” And Mr. Carrington, smiling, put the cigarette case