Light Years Read Online Free PDF Page B

Eve said.
    Arnaud was strong in the manner of men who surprise you—math teachers, dentists. He was past his real strength, thirty-four, a pot-bellied figure already dark with cigar smoke. He was vague, cunning, clumsy. He could do fantastic tricks with cards.
    “I used to wrestle,” he said. “I fought some big men …”
    “Where, in college?”
    “… some of them eight feet tall. The only trouble with it is that everyone smells so bad.”
    He was drinking. He smiled when he drank; it didn’t affect him. It made him another man, a man who could not be offended, who swam in the warmth of life. Around him were women in gold dresses, women who once were models. They were the caryatids of a certain fashionable layer of New York. Arnaud, with his gray complexion, the dandruff on his collar, was their favorite. He was fond, irreverent, he loved to tell tales.
    “You’re coming to the film?” the host asked them.
    “Is there going to be a film?” Nedra said.
    “In a couple of hours,” deBeque said. “It’s a film we’re distributing; it hasn’t been shown.”
    “Do you know Eve Caunt?” Viri offered.
    “Eve? Of course I know Eve. Everyone knows Eve.” His eyes were as pale as a glass of water. His stare was scalding.
    “I don’t know half the people here,” he confessed to Viri. “Well, the women; I know all the women.” He lowered his voice. “There are some fantastic women here, believe me.”
    He took Viri by the arm and led him off. “I want to talk to you,” he explained. “Wait, here’s someone you should meet.” He reached for a bare arm. “This is Faye Massey.”
    The bad complexion of a girl of good family. A low-cut dress on which the watery stare lingered. “You’re looking very well, Faye,” he said.
    “Is the film as bad as I hear?”
    “Bad? It’s a ravishing film.”
    “That’s not what I hear,” she said.
    “Faye is a very interesting girl,” deBeque said, glancing down again into her dress. “A lot of people say so.”
    “Stop it,” she said.
    “I think this evening belongs to the women,” deBeque decided.
    “What do you mean by that?”
    “You’re all so good-looking.”
    Beyond them Viri could see a girl sitting on the edge of a couch.
    “Why are you always talking in the plural?”
    “It’s natural for a man.”
    “What’s natural and what’s not natural?” she asked. “We’re so far from being natural … that’s the whole trouble.”
    Viri was waiting to excuse himself. “Do you think of yourself as natural?” she asked him.
    “We all do, don’t we?” he said. “More or less.”
    “You can think anything you like,” she said. “Just name me one.”
    “Do you know Arnaud Roth?”
    “Who?” Suddenly she smiled, a warm, unexpected smile. “Arnaud. You’re right. I love him,” she said. “I’ve known him for years.”
    In the woman who overwhelms us there must be nothing familiar. Faye was telling a story about Arnaud buying an airplane; it wouldn’t fly, she said, wasn’t that typical? It was parked near a pond. The girl on the couch had risen and was talking to someone. Viri tried not to stare. He was helpless at gatherings like this where the conversation was rapid and cynical, the encounters remote as at dancing class. He found refuge, usually, with someone grotesque, out of competition. He resisted handsome faces, he had learned not to look at them, but she was that unknown creature to whom he was dazedly vulnerable, slim, with full breasts as if she were burdened by them. Even her thumbs were bony.
    He could not keep sight of her. He could not, even for a moment, imagine her life. If she had turned to him, he would have been speechless or worse, saying inane things he instantly regretted, illustrating for her a certain kind of pathetic, ordinary man fit only to be what he was: a commuter, the head of a family. But that’s not what I am, he wanted to say, that’s not what I am at all. Anyway, she was gone. She was