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the dough.’ His pockets had no bottoms, so he tied the nickels into one of his shirt tails.
    A goblet for Rhine wine hobnobbed with a champagne glass at each place along the glittering white oval table. On eight glossy white plates eight canapés of caviar were like rounds of black beads on the lettuceleaves, flanked by sections of lemon, sprinkled with a sparse chopping of onion and white of egg. ‘Beaucoup de soing and dont you forget it,’ said the old waiter puckering up his knobbly forehead. He was a short waddling man with a few black strands of hair plastered tight across a domed skull
    ‘Awright.’ Emile nodded his head gravely. His collar was too tight for him. He was shaking a last bottle of champagne into the nickelbound bucket of ice on the serving-table.
    ‘Beaucoup de soing, sporca madonna… Thisa guy trows money about lika confetti, see… Gives tips, see. He’s a verra rich gentleman. He dont care how much he spend.’ Emile patted the crease of the tablecloth to flatten it. ‘Fais pas, como, ça… Your hand’s dirty, maybe leava mark.’
    Resting first on one foot then on the other they stood waiting, their napkins under their arms. From the restaurant below among the buttery smells of food and the tinkle of knives and forks and plates, came the softly gyrating sound of a waltz.
    When he saw the headwaiter bow outside the door Emile compressed his lips into a deferential smile. There was a long-toothed blond woman in a salmon operacloak swishing on the arm of a moonfaced man who carried his top hat ahead of him like a bumper; there was a little curlyhaired girl in blue who was showing her teeth and laughing, a stout woman in a tiara with a black velvet ribbon round her neck, a bottlenose, a long cigarcolored face… shirtfronts, hands straightening white ties, black gleams on top hats and patent leather shoes; there was a weazlish man with gold teeth who kept waving his arms spitting out greetings in a voice like a crow’s and wore a diamond the size of a nickel in his shirtfront.The redhaired cloakroom girl was collecting the wraps. The old waiter nudged Emile. ‘He’s de big boss,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth as he bowed. Emile flattened himself against the wall as they shuffled rustled into the room. A whiff of patchouli when he drew his breath made him go suddenly hot to the roots of his hair.
    ‘But where’s Fifi Waters?’ shouted the man with the diamond stud.
    ‘She said she couldnt get here for half an hour. I guess the Johnnies wont let her get by the stage door.’
    ‘Well we cant wait for her even if it is her birthday; never waited for anyone in my life.’ He stood a second running a roving eye over the women round the table, then shot his cuffs out a little further from the sleeves of his swallowtail coat, and abruptly sat down. The caviar vanished in a twinkling. ‘And waiter what about that Rhine wine coupe?’ he croaked huskily. ‘De suite monsieur…’ Emile holding his breath and sucking in his cheeks, was taking away the plates. A frost came on the goblets as the old waiter poured out the coupe from a cut glass pitcher where floated mint and ice and lemon rind and long slivvers of cucumber.
    ‘Aha, this’ll do the trick.’ The man with the diamond stud raised his glass to his lips, smacked them and set it down with a slanting look at the woman next him. She was putting dabs of butter on bits of bread and popping them into her mouth, muttering all the while:
    ‘I can only eat the merest snack, only the merest snack.’
    ‘That dont keep you from drinkin Mary does it?’
    She let out a cackling laugh and tapped him on the shoulder with her closed fan. ‘O Lord, you’re a card, you are.’
    ‘Allume moi ça, sporca madonna,’ hissed the old waiter in Emile’s ear.
    When he lit the lamps under the two chafing dishes on the serving table a smell of hot sherry and cream and lobster began to seep into the room. The air was hot, full of tinkle and