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Yet he had known by instinct that Louetta Swanson could be approached. Her eyes and lips were moist. Her face tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin, her mouth was thin but strong and avid, and between her brows were two outcurving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty, perhaps, or younger.
Of these naggers the Swansons were perfect specimens. Throughout the dinner Eddie Swanson had been complaining, publicly, about his wife's new frock. It was, he submitted, too short, too low, too immodestly thin, and much too expensive. He appealed to Babbitt: "Honest, George, what do you think of that rag Louetta went and bought? Don't you think it's the limit?" "What's eating you, Eddie?
"That boy Paul's worth all these ballyhooing highbrows put together," he muttered; and, "I'd like to get away from everything." Even Louetta Swanson did not rouse him. Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant. Babbitt was not an analyst of women, except as to their tastes in Furnished Houses to Rent. He divided them into Real Ladies, Working Women, Old Cranks, and Fly Chickens.
He insisted on helping Louetta in the kitchen: taking the chicken croquettes from the warming-oven, the lettuce sandwiches from the ice-box. He held her hand, once, and she depressingly didn't notice it. She caroled, "You're a good little mother's-helper, Georgie. Now trot in with the tray and leave it on the side-table."
I'll be fifty in three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I'm going to have some fun before it's too late. I don't care! I will!" He thought of Ida Putiak, of Louetta Swanson, of that nice widow what was her name? Tanis Judique? the one for whom he'd found the flat. He was enmeshed in imaginary conversations. Then: "Gee, I can't seem to get away from thinking about folks!"
Look here: There's some folks coming to the house to-night, Louetta Swanson and some other live ones, and I'm going to open up a bottle of pre-war gin, and maybe we'll dance a while. Why don't you drop in and jazz it up a little, just for a change?" "Well What time they coming?" He was at Sam Doppelbrau's at nine. It was the third time he had entered the house. By ten he was calling Mr.
He wished that Eddie Swanson would give them cocktails; that Louetta would have one. He wanted Oh, he wanted to be one of these Bohemians you read about. Studio parties. Wild lovely girls who were independent. Not necessarily bad. Certainly not! But not tame, like Floral Heights. How he'd ever stood it all these years Eddie did not give them cocktails.
Babbitt liked nice love stories about New York millionaries and Wyoming cowpunchers; Louetta Swanson knitted a pink bed-jacket; Sidney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed flapper of a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of Parcher and Stein. All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At the Athletic Club they asked after her daily.
Do you know I dreamed of you, one time!" "Was it a nice dream?" "Lovely!" "Oh, well, they say dreams go by opposites! Now I must run in." She was on her feet. "Oh, don't go in yet! Please, Louetta!" "Yes, I must. Have to look out for my guests." "Let 'em look out for 'emselves!" "I couldn't do that." She carelessly tapped his shoulder and slipped away.
Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important to tell you!" The women wriggled, and Babbitt was stirred to like naughtiness.
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