The Dinner Party Read Online Free PDF

heater going?”
    â€œI set it last night, but it doesn’t start heating until six in the morning. Once Mac starts putting the cover on at night, we won’t have a problem.”
    Elizabeth had begun her laps without waiting for him to finish his explanation. She swam with a smooth, easy freestyle that brought a grunt of praise from Clarence.
    â€œMan, she’s a beautiful swimmer.”
    â€œI’ve raced her a hundred times. She always beats me. Men can swim faster, but I never saw a man who could swim with the style and class of a good lady swimmer.”
    Clarence was looking around, absorbing every detail, the striped cabana tent at one end, the outdoor shower, the lovely wrought-iron table and chairs on the poolside terrace, the telephone, the wheeled cart with its weather-protected small television, so that even here one should be near the glass tit on which all America sucked. “This,” he said, “is what they call the good life, and you had no business bringing a poor black boy out here to taste it. When I was waiting tables at Casey’s and brought you a beer, I had no idea that you had crawled out of a cornucopia to go slumming.”
    â€œBullshit. You’ll be the editor of the Law Review and you’ll walk out of school into a job at some truly hotshot New York or Washington firm at a starting wage of fifty grand a year, so don’t pull any Topsy shit on me.”
    â€œTopsy was a girl. The rich are always ignorant.”
    Nellie Clough, the housemaid, appeared. She was small, blonde, and cute; at least, Dolly always described her as cute, and she had an interesting Irish brogue. She was not impressed by Clarence’s statement about the rich; her own faith in the rich would never be shaken. She had been with the family six years, and only once during that time had the senator crawled into bed with her. She had known girls in the old country where it had been every month and every week, and in one case, with Sir Roger Kimberly, every day of the week, although Nellie never knew whether to believe the girl who told her the story. Measured against that yardstick, the senator was a gentleman. All her very restrained and careful advances toward Leonard had so far produced no results, yet she smiled on him fondly as she told him that Ellen was out of patience today. “That’s what she says,” Nellie told them. “Breakfast will not be served at the pool, and not even juice or coffee, mind you, and after ten you get no breakfast at all, not a smidgen, because it is a day with no extra hours, which is what she says.”
    â€œAh, Nellie,” Leonard said, “you know I love you—”
    â€œI know nothing of the kind.”
    â€œâ€”and what harm—” imitating her accent “—in a bit of coffee and a crock of juice. Come on. Come on. Be a love.”
    â€œEllen would kill me. You know the way she is.” Pointing to Elizabeth, doing her laps, “She’s at it again?”
    â€œI can’t talk her out of it. Even coffee. Just coffee—how about it, you lovely golden-haired creature?”
    â€œAll right. I’ll try. I don’t promise, but I’ll try.”
    She departed, and Leonard stared at Elizabeth. Clarence mentioned the fact that Nellie did not appear to know he was there.
    â€œShe can’t deal with blacks. She’s used to Ellen and Mac, and maybe she pretends they’re not black. But others—I don’t know. To be plucked out of a peasant cottage in Ireland and dropped here—well, it’s a peculiar transition.”
    â€œBy the way,” Clarence asked, “does Elizabeth know?”
    â€œKnow? Oh, you mean about me. No, she doesn’t.”
    â€œShe knows you’re gay?”
    â€œShe knows. We’ve never talked about it, but I’m sure she knows. She’s smart. She’s a damn sight smarter than anyone gives her credit for, because when you