In A Yellow Wood: A Novel by Gore Vidal by Gore Vidal

Author:Gore Vidal [Vidal, Gore]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

2

NIGHT

Chapter Nine

THE PARTY SEEMED TO BE GOING WELL. ALTHOUGH MRS Raymond Stevanson hated cocktail parties, finding her own almost as bad as other people's, she still felt she had to give them and she worked very hard to make them outstanding. Several hundred well-dressed people wandered about her large apartment, looking at the furniture, each other, and the five different paintings of Mrs Stevanson. There were no traces of Mr Stevanson in the apartment. He had died early in her career, leaving her his money and four race horses. She had sold the horses and she had saved quite a bit of the money. Now, at fifty-five, she was a famous hostess and somewhat overweight.

"Good evening, Helena." Mrs Stevanson turned around and saw the thin malicious face of Beatrice Jordan. They were contemporaries.

"Beatrice! How marvelous!" They touched cheeks with slight frowns, then came apart again with affectionate smiles. Beatrice stood back a moment and looked at Mrs Stevanson. Beatrice was extremely nearsighted but much too vain to wear glasses. To see clearly she was forced to tuck her chin down and look upward, a habit which had given her an undeserved reputation as a coquette. She did this now.

"Helena, you've lost weight! How?"

Mrs Stevanson was pleased. "Does it really show?" She patted her cement-hard corseted buttock.

"Not so much around there," said Beatrice, thinking for a moment. "More around here." She touched her own meager breasts.

"You think so?" Mrs Stevanson was irritated and angry with herself for allowing Beatrice Jordan to say such a thing. Mrs Stevanson was proud of her breasts. Several of the famous painters had called her voluptuous.

"It's been lovely seeing you, Helena darling. I've got to join my escort now. I came with Clyde."

Beatrice said this triumphantly but gained no victory.

"You came with Clyde. How wonderful! I'm dining with him tomorrow."

"Indeed?"

"Is he here now?"

"He's in the other room."

"Do tell him to see me before he leaves. There are so many people here."

"I will, darling. Lovely to see you." Beatrice smiled, showing her artful white false teeth and Mrs Stevanson smiled back showing her own artful white false teeth. The two women parted.

Mrs Stevanson was annoyed but she had found that the older she got the less interested she was in what people said. It was well known anyway that Beatrice Jordan was a cat.

Mrs Stevanson walked now from group to group. The groups unfolded for her like flowers before the sun. She would disappear for a moment into the heart of one and then it would unfold again, release her and become tight and compact once more.

Certain groups contained people more important than other groups. In these she lingered longest, smiling the most attractively, saying her superlatives.

In the dining room a buffet had been set on a long table. Three footmen (hired for the evening only) guarded it from the hungry-looking guests, betrayed it to the superior ones who were not hungry.

Twenty or thirty people were gathered here and they looked rather self-conscious as she approached. Somehow

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