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perfume and smoke. After he had helped serve the lobster Newburg and refilled the glasses Emile leaned against the wall and ran his hand over his wet hair. His eyes slid along the plump shoulders of the woman in front of him and down the powdered back to where a tiny silver hook had come undone under the lace rushing. The baldheaded man next to her had his leg locked with hers. She was young,Emile’s age, and kept looking up into the man’s face with moist parted lips. It made Emile dizzy, but he couldn’t stop looking.
    ‘But what’s happened to the fair Fifi?’ creaked the man with the diamond stud through a mouthful of lobster. ‘I suppose that she made such a hit again this evening that our simple little party dont appeal to her.’
    ‘It’s enough to turn any girl’s head.’
    ‘Well she’ll get the surprise of her young life if she expected us to wait. Haw, haw, haw,’ laughed the man with the diamond stud. ‘I never waited for anybody in my life and I’m not going to begin now.’
    Down the table the moonfaced man had pushed back his plate and was playing with the bracelet on the wrist of the woman beside him. ‘You’re the perfect Gibson girl tonight, Olga.’
    ‘I’m sitting for my portrait now,’ she said holding up her goblet against the light.
    ‘To Gibson?’
    ‘No to a real painter.’
    ‘By Gad I’ll buy it.’
    ‘Maybe you wont have a chance.’
    She nodded her blond pompadour at him.
    ‘You’re a wicked little tease, Olga.’
    She laughed keeping her lips tight over her long teeth.
    A man was leaning towards the man with the diamond stud, tapping with a stubby finger on the table.
    ‘No sir as a real estate proposition, Twentythird Street has crashed… That’s generally admitted… But what I want to talk to you about privately sometime Mr Godalming, is this… How’s all the big money in New York been made? Astor, Vanderbilt, Fish… In real estate of course. Now it’s up to us to get in on the next great clean-up… It’s almost here… Buy Forty…’
    The man with the diamond stud raised one eyebrow and shook his head. ‘For one night on Beauty’s lap, O put gross care away… or something of the sort… Waiter why in holy hell are you so long with the champagne?’ He got to his feet, coughed in his hand and began to sing in his croaking voice:
    O would the Atlantic were all champagne
Bright billows of champagne.
    Everybody clapped. The old waiter had just divided a baked Alaska and, his face like a beet, was prying out a stiff champagnecork. When the cork popped the lady in the tiara let out a yell. They toasted the man in the diamond stud.
    For he’s a jolly good fellow…
    ‘Now what kind of a dish d’ye call this?’ the man with the bottlenose leaned over and asked the girl next to him. Her black hair parted in the middle; she wore a palegreen dress with puffy sleeves. He winked slowly and then stared hard into her black eyes.
    ‘This here’s the fanciest cookin I ever put in my mouth… D’ye know young leddy, I dont come to this town often… He gulped down the rest of his glass. An when I do I usually go away kinder disgusted…’ His look bright and feverish from the champagne explored the contours of her neck and shoulders and roamed down a bare arm. ‘But this time I kinder think…’
    ‘It must be a great life prospecting,’ she interrupted flushing.
    ‘It was a great life in the old days, a rough life but a man’s life… I’m glad I made my pile in the old days… Wouldnt have the same luck now.’
    She looked up at him. ‘How modest you are to call it luck.’
    Emile was standing outside the door of the private room. There was nothing more to serve. The redhaired girl from the cloakroom walked by with a big flounced cape on her arm. He smiled, tried to catch her eye. She sniffed and tossed her nose in the air. Wont look at me because I’m a waiter. When I make some money I’ll show ’em.
    ‘Dis; tella Charlie two more bottle Moet and