Trio for Blunt Instruments

7

ONE DAY LAST WEEK there was a party at Lily Rowan’s penthouse. She never invites more than six to dinner-eight counting her and me-but that was a dancing party and around coffee time a dozen more came and three musicians got set in the alcove and started up. After rounds with Lily and three or four others, I approached Sue McLeod and offered a hand.

She gave me a look. “You know you don’t want to. Let’s go outside.”

I said it was cold, and she said she knew it and headed for the foyer. We got her wrap, a fur thing which she probably didn’t own, since top-flight models are offered loans of everything from socks to sable, went back in, on through, and out to the terrace. There were evergreens in tubs, and we crossed to them for shelter from the wind.

“You told Lily I hate you,” she said. “I don’t.”

“Not ‘hate,’” I said. “She misquoted me or you’re misquoting her. She said I should dance with you and I said when I tried it a month ago you froze.”

“I know I did.” She put a hand on my arm. “Archie. It was hard, you know it was. If I hadn’t got my father to let him work on the farm… it was my fault, I know it was… but I couldn’t help thinking if you hadn’t sent him that… letting him know you knew…”

“I didn’t send it, Mr. Wolfe did. But I would have. Okay, he was your father, so it was hard. But no matter whose father he was, I’m not wearing an arm band for the guy who packed dynamite in that carton.”

“Of course not. I know. Of course not. I tell myself I’ll have to forget it… but it’s not easy…” She shivered. “Anyway I wanted to say I don’t hate you. You don’t have to dance with me, and you know I’m not going to get married until I can stop working and have babies, and I know you never are, and even if you do it will be Lily, but you don’t have to stand there and let me really freeze, do you?”

I didn’t. You don’t have to be rude, even with a girl who can’t dance, and it was cold out there.