"I think so."

"He is Guts. He is shining Bra.s.s. We are surrounded by the Loyal Ones, on and off camera. Shrewd agency minds. Fantastic technicians. Talent, beauty, dignity and greed." He thumped Kirby again. "Sabbith went in there as the writer. Do you know what he is now? He is the writer, and the director, and the producer, with twenty-eight grand apiece in hand for each and every message. That is what we celebrate, fellow. And we tolerate no solemnity, no groaning of the bored. Gather a damsel, grasp the wine, howl and prance, fellow. Let us see a little forthright debauchery. What is your trade, fellow?"

Kirby looked him squarely in the eye. "Philanthropy."

"Good G.o.d, another agency man?"

More gla.s.ses broke. A spindly girl did a comedy trampoline act on the giant bed, to mild applause. The next record was Cuban, from the time when Cubans were cheerful, flexible folk.

A vision floated over to Noonan and Kirby. She was the young Ingrid, a younger Greta, a juvenile Marlena, drifting, pensive, faintly confused as though she had just been awakened, or had just been given a good one behind the ear. She had great sad tilted dreamy gray-blue eyes, oval shadowed hollows in her cheeks, a golden drift of cobweb hair, a white length of throat. She seemed to be on the edge of tears, and in her dusky voice was a throb of heartbreak.

"Noony," she said, "this one come down with the scurds?"

Noonan was most gentle with her, as though she were the only survivor of some inconceivable disaster. "No, dear. I'm sorry."

"Diddly bring the scurds?"

Noonan patted her thin shoulder gently. "Some one else is bringing them, dear. Don't you fret. What did you say your name is, sir?" "Eddie. Eddie Heeler."

"Eddie, may I present Minta Burleigh. Minta, dear. Show Eddie what you do. Minta?"

She looked at Noonan, at the floor and at her empty hands and said mournfully, "Whaddle I use?" Noonan gave her his cigarette case. She turned slowly and focused on Kirby. She held the cigarette case up. She tilted her head. She smiled at Kirby, and suddenly she was specific, obvious, glowing, direct , like something that emerges from the fog and bears down upon you. "For that seventh loveliness," she said in a throbbing, dramatic contralto, "Parmalon! In the jeweled decorator case, for the woman who cares so much." Her lights went out like an unplugged Christmas tree and she listlessly handed the case back to Noonan.

"She's worried about some skirts," Noonan explained. "There's a color matching problem in a medium shot where she walks toward camera."

"Fugging scurds," Minta murmured. "Be nice to Eddie, dear," Noonan said. "I got to go calm Harry down again."

Minta tottered slightly and looked at Kirby. The vast eyes seemed to cross slightly for a moment. She turned her hand out, held her wrist up where Kirby could read what someone had printed with a ball-point pen on the tender, transparent, blue-veined skin. "Worm I sacked?" she asked. "Sultana. Seven-twenty," he read.

She swayed toward him, hooked her weight on his belt and laid her gentle cheek against Ms chest. "Sokay," she sighed. "Juss no messing the hair, no bruise the mouth."

Bonny Lee appeared just beyond Minta, looking at Kirby with an odd expression. "Having fun?"

Kirby made gentle efforts to disentangle Minta. He was afraid of fracturing or dislocating something. "I've been waiting for you," he explained.

"Sorta killin' time, sweetie? Where'd you get the disaster case?"

Minta swayed around and looked at Bonny Lee. "Where are all the peasants coming from?"

Bonny Lee slowly drew back a clenched right fist. Kirby spotted one of the dark-suited ones standing a little to one side, his eyes closed, swaying in time to the Latin beat. He put his hands on Minta's narrow waist, picked her up and set her down against the man with the closed eyes. She had been as easy to lift as a child. She immediately hooked her weight onto the man's belt and laid her gentle cheek against his chest. The man didn't open his eyes. In a few seconds they began to dance, moving slightly to every fourth bar of the music.

"It was just like that, Bonny Lee," Kirby said.

She gave him a narrow look. "Sure. Just in case I never showed, huh?"

"Bonny Lee, we've got too much to talk about to get started off this way. I've been terribly worried about you. I've got to tell you what happened. We've got to figure out what to do next."

"Look like you already knew." She looked around at the party. "Man, we're going to get no help out of this outfit. They gone past the point. Let me say in to Bernie and we'll take off."

"I see no reason why you have to say anything to him."

"Oh, you don't!"

"No, I don't!"

"So you rove free as a bird and I can't even say h.e.l.lo! Is that it?"

"You got the wrong idea about that girl, Bonny Lee. But I don't have any wrong ideas about Bernie Sabbith."

She moved closer and glowered at him. "The only idea you got about Bernie is he's a friend, and right now no more than a friend, and I say h.e.l.lo to friends."

"Never more than a friend. Get that clear!"Suddenly she looked amused. "Just listen to us, hey? Sure, Kirby. Never more than a friend. And that's all you have, too. Friends."

He saw her wend her way through the confusions to Bernie's side. When he hugged her, Kirby glowered at them. He turned and went off in pursuit of the fat girl. She was forlorn at giving up the hat, the cane and the badge. Bonny Lee came back to Kirby, near the door, and she seemed to stumble against him, put her arm around him. He felt her hand in the side pocket of the cord jacket. Suddenly she appeared in a new place two feet to the right of where she had been. She handed him the watch, and she was smiling cheerfully.

In the middle of the big room, Minta Burleigh went mad. All eyes were on her as she leaped, yelped, spun, nailed in a frenzy of the dance. Her Slav eyes were crazed, and the cords in her pale throat stood out. Her partner got in the way and got a crack across the chops which staggered him. As the dance began to diminish, Bonny Lee urged Kirby toward the door. The door closed behind them, cutting the major part of the din, and Kirby could hear Bonny Lee chuckling as they went down the stairs to the alley. "What did you do?" he demanded.

"Packed her pants with shaved ice, lover. Guess there's life left in her. But, gawdd.a.m.n, she's built scrawny."

Lizbeth's car, an English Ford sedan, was parked at the mouth of the alley. They got in and as soon as they'd closed the doors, Bonny Lee made a small furry sound in her throat and came into his arms, filled with a ready warmth and kisses and strength of round arms, and at long last said, "How come I could get to miss you so dang much? And you a city type fella."

"What has that got to, "

"Trouble is, you think too much. By the time you through walking around something, thinking at it, it like to take off. I just couldn't figure how you'd try to find me, but I guess you finally decided trying Rio's. How'd you like Lizbeth? You catch her act?" "Yes, I, "

"And I went round and round with that Charla friend of yours. There's a woman mean as a snake, Kirby. And she had those two hoodlum boys to quieten me, but they weren't enough, not for a girl who one tune when she was thirteen got run into the piney woods from a tent meeting by seven old boys full of shine, twicet as tough, each one, as those boys Charla had trying to keep holt of me. In those moony woods, I chunked two of them with rocks, tipped one into a crick, kicked one ontill he screamed like a girl and plain outrun the other three. They picked them the wrong gal, just like that Charla did. No man has ever forced me, nor ever will."

"I want to tell you, "

"So things can get ordered out for you, a little at a time, if you go at it direct, and I took something else off you tonight, that waiter you slugged."

"What?"

"By now he's told the police he's taking back the complaint on you, and even if he hasn't, you got this paper I brang you, sweetheart."

He looked at the paper in the flame of a match. On it was written, "The man hitting me taking my cloths, he was short fat bald maybe sixty year. I say it Mr. Winter so my name is on newspaper, for important." It was signed by the waiter and by two witnesses.

"How did you get this?"

"I was at Lizbeth's place and getting restless, so when I heard about the fire I thought maybe those two boys wouldn't be waiting at my place any more, so I went to see and they were gone. And I wanted my own clothes on account of in the top half of Lizbeth's there's room enough for me and a set of drums. I got into some of my own clothes and took money from under the mattress and went to the Elise. That waiter and I had a little talk. Somewhere while I was talking he got the idea he better settle small and get out, or somebody might float him away on the tide. So he took five hundred, and his signature is a little bit wiggly, but it's good enough I think. It was just a little favor, lover. If I could get to talk personal to them two hungry cops, I bet you I could fix that up too."

"I'm beginning to think you could."

"Anyhow, when we got back to that little pink house with those muscly fellas of Lizbeth's, I knew you'd got hold of that golden watch and used it good, and taken that Wilma girl away with you, so I stopped being so fretful about you, but I sure wish you'd taken my car so we'd have one less trouble. Sugar, you better tell me all of what happened, every dang bit of it, and you better be real complete, because I have it in my mind you went off with Wilma and here it is after midnight. There's time in there to burn a boat and do too much else too."

They were turned, facing each other in the small car. He held her hands and told her all that had happened. When he came to the situation with Joseph and Charla, the way he had left them when he had carried Betsy off the boat, her fingers dug into his hands. Whenhe toldher about how he had changed his mind and gotten back to them barely in time, her grip softened.

"Hold me some," she said in a low voice. He held her.