Read Tales From Gavagan's Bar for Free Online Page B

home. Andy wanted to go to the ski carnival at Lake Placid, and she let him go alone, finally. And the next summer, when he wanted to take a house at Southport for a couple of months, weekending himself, she wouldn't do that either. It got to be a standing joke about her being such a town mouse. There just wasn't anything else until the October party.
     
                  I call it the October party, because it was important to me. It was at it I met Walter—my husband, Walter Grady. Do you believe in love at first sight, Mrs.—did you tell me your name?—Mrs. Jonas? I never did, but the first time I met Walter I knew he was the man I wanted to mam'. I also knew I didn't have a chance. He came with that Reinschloss girl, the blonde. Did you ever meet her? She won a beauty contest later and went to Hollywood as "The Society Star." And it was obvious that she wanted him, too.
     
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                  I may have hinted something about it that night—I don't know. But anyway it couldn't have been more than a day or two later, when I was having lunch with Betty-Jo, that I really let myself go on the subject. We had a couple of cocktails before lunch and a brandy afterward, and I suppose it broke both of us down a little. I know I did tell her I'd given up on live alone and like it. If I could have Walter I wouldn't care for another thing in the world. And it's true—it's true. I still feel that way. Only—
     
                  [Eloise Grady drank and looked at the other two.] I remember her looking at me hard and then saying very quietly, as though she hadn't had anything to drink at all: "Do you really want him enough to go through what I have?"
     
                  "What do you mean?" I asked her.
     
                  "Oh—missing out on trips, and—a lot of things."
     
                  I still didn't quite understand, but I was too wrought up to be curious. I just said: "Yes, I want him that much."
     
                  "All right," she said, "the Barnards are giving a dinner party next week, and I know Walter's coming. I'll get them to ask you. But before you go, be sure to go to Mme. Lavoisin's in the afternoon and have a beauty treatment. Tell her I sent you, and it's a date with a man."
     
                  I felt let down. You know, as though I'd b een expecting to take a tremendous dive, and it turned out to be only a step down to the water. But I did it. I accepted the invitation when it came, and I went to Mme. Lavoisin's. I can't say I was impressed by the place when I went in.
     
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                  "What was t he matter with it?" asked Mrs. Jonas. "It looked all right to me."
     
                  "Didn't you get the impression that the place was somewhat shabby? When you look directly at anything, it's clean enough and nice enough, but you always feel that there's something just at the edge of what you're looking at that isn't quite right."
     
                  "Well, sort of, when I first went in," admitted Mrs. Jonas. "And I didn't like that receptionist."
     
                  "The one with the big black cat sitting on the chair beside her?" said Eloise Grady. She turned to Jeffers. "She's nicely dressed and everything, but she has buck teeth."
     
                  "Yes," said Mrs. Jonas, "and the two end ones, right here, kind of pointed. You'd think that a girl working in a beauty parlor like that would get her teeth fixed up. I want another Presidente."
     
                  Eloise Grady gave a little sigh.
     
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                  Well, I don't have to tell you [she went on]. Or about Mme. Lavoisin herself. She has very black hair and looks as though she were about thirty when you first see her, and then you make up your mind that she's really much older, only just well turned out. The receptionist said she only took