CHAPTER ELEVEN

Anita's office, a free employment bureau, closed early, so that she was always the first to return to the apartment which she and Grace now shared. It stood on the same street as Dee's old studio, and at this time of the afternoon, in the lull between the exodus from shops and offices and the re-migration to restaurants and theaters, it greeted Anita with a soothing fragrance of quiet. She threw herself down on the couch. The odds and ends of gray, home-painted furniture were spotted with lingering sunshine; one pale beam lay across the bookcase; an orange vase shone. She was sure of perhaps half an hour of utter peace.

Thereafter the telephone began to squeal. The early calls were always for Grace. Then there would be a short interval. Finally, always to Anita with the force of surprise, the tone of Dennis Meloney's "Hul-lo," long-drawn and resonant, warm and vague, drifted through the telephone.

Anita said, as always, "Is--this--you, Dennis?"

He answered reassuringly, as always, the words resounding through his nose, "None other!"

"Sober?"

"Very!" said Dennis, with too much conviction. He added, "I'll be right over."

As she knew from experience, this might well mean several hours later. It was one of the phrases which Dennis used to assert his complete spiritual willingness behind which the uncontrollable body lagged under no matter what goads, to his bewilderment, even to his dismay. He had informed Anita, in one of his solemn moments of drunken articulateness, "You'll learn this about me--I'm a terrible liar." Anita had only been able to smile and sigh and shake her head in resignation that had in it a note of noblesse oblige, of staying one's hand as with an inferior in one's power. She was often on the point of not bearing with Dennis any longer. If she had been alone she could have swiftly made up her mind, but with Grace in the background she felt almost as if she were playing before an audience, as if she were constrained to go on with the performance before it though hampered by its presence. Grace, she knew, did not treat her as a poor relation because she "had Dennis." She could almost see the idea behind Grace's mounting intimacy. A girl who could attach even one not wholly undesirable man for that length of time and with that comparative regularity could not be beyond the pale, might even be "one of us." The old formula of contrast, a beautiful girl selecting a colorless girl as companion and foil, is outmoded. Two charming girls, it has been learned, are better than one to attract men.

The telephone rang more and more insistently. Blake called up and left a message. The entry of Grace dispersed the last vestige of solitude.

She searched the room with a wide and tenacious gaze.

"What have you been doing?" she said, and, not waiting for a reply, she launched into an account of her afternoon.

"I don't believe--I'll have any more trouble with Madge Murphy," she concluded. "I can't understand--girls like that! Madge Murphy gets around a lot; she knows a lot of people. I don't see how she does it. She's so homely! She has little, wrinkled, blackish eyes, raisin eyes. She's one of those girls who--stick--out in front and in back and who always, by instinct, sort of, gravitate to stripes, those heavy, long stripes, in purple and red, you know. I suppose they think it makes them look thin! Nothing could make her look thin--not even a steam roller!"

This trick of Grace's of describing people by means of the simplifications of the caricaturist always seemed strange to Anita. How could Grace, who disapproved of Anita's penchant for taking sides, who, though she enjoyed gossip, was always careful to repeat it with impartial omniscience--how could Grace, who was so tolerant, pass such cruel judgments with her eyes and ears? Anita had learned to be on guard against Grace's descriptions, for when she saw the people herself, they were apt to be so different.

"There are so many girls like that," continued Grace, "that you--meet around. There's nothing to them that you can put your finger on. And they take themselves so--seriously. But they seem to get along. I suppose it's just push," she added thoughtfully. "They simply--push themselves in everywhere."

She went on: "Anyhow, I've discovered a grand method of dealing with people who talk about you. Hereafter I mean to confront them as I did Madge and ask them straight out, but very--sweetly, you know, did they really say that? It's like confronting a murderer with the body of his victim. It works."

"It wouldn't work with me. I'd just answer yes," said Anita coolly. "Besides," she added, "there's danger in that method. It might actually keep people from talking about you."

But Grace didn't mind. That was just Anita's way. "We can't all be little tartars like you," she said amiably.

The deliberate rhythm of her movements as she went about the business of making her toilette and choosing her clothes for the evening could not be ruffled. Each motion was so precise, followed upon every other so perfectly, had such a smooth place in Grace's daily ritual, that Anita could not resist following with her eyes and even with her mind, as one follows involuntarily the rhythm of the hymns and genuflections in a church, the rhythm of the Perpetual Adoration before an altar. Grace was ready to do up her hair when Dennis appeared. She was still engaged with it when Blake followed him.

Making her entrance through the bedroom door, she stood poised for a moment, in a pale, ocher-colored, georgette dress, the glamorous product at last of all her small, attuned labors. She glanced at Dennis, who was neither entirely drunk nor entirely sober, with a smile of intimate and amused understanding, then turned her eyes to Anita, as if to reassure her that smiles for Dennis must also be smiles for her.

"How--are you?" she said gravely, with a slight, coy lift of her brow.

"O.K.," said Dennis. Viewing her luminous harmony with a pleasure that imprinted itself on his face, he found nothing more to say. He retired into the silence which was his only way of being dignified and polite.

Grace passed in front of him and took her place on Blake's lap.

"You ought to be able--to help me out," she said, drawing the great pools of her eyes from Dennis to Anita, then to their final resting place on Blake's countenance. "I have to write a woman's magazine article about Carolyn Hale called, 'What I Think of Love.'"

Blake snickered. "Be sure to spell love with a capital letter. The capitalization of love is very appropriate for Carolyn Hale."

"Are you--punning, Blake, by any chance?"

She secured her attention entirely to him, gazing in his face and beginning for him the motions of her special laugh.

"Punning, Blake, is the lowest form of humor," said Anita.

But neither Grace nor Blake appeared to hear or to be affected. They continued the duet of their particular amusement, while Dennis sat, silent, with a polite grin glued to his mouth and Anita did not smile at all and tapped a foot.

It was Grace who interrupted herself, not having lost track of her plans.

"It's rather--important," she explained. "I'd like to get in with Carolyn. If I can put this over it'll be quite a good stunt for her. It might--give me a start with the magazines. And, on the strength of it, I might--be able to sell Carolyn the idea of making Blake's play into a movie."

She looked questioningly at Blake. Grace was always tactful about injecting herself into Blake's affairs, but Anita couldn't help wondering how much of her interest was a sincere wish to help Blake and how much was a desire to show him that she was no mere hanger-on of his new-found importance, that she and her connections were valuable to him.

He replied by a pleased lift of his brows.

Grace addressed Dennis: "You ought to have some ideas for me, Dennis. You're a press agent yourself."

"I got out a story like that for a fan magazine," offered Dennis after a deep silence. "It's the same old hokum. But it might give you an idea. I could look it up for you."

"That's what they want, the same old hokum," said Blake.

And, "That sounds perfect," declared Grace. "I don't suppose--you care if I--use--some of it."

"O.K.," said Dennis, shrugging.

Grace paused. "You wouldn't like--to come back here after dinner and help me--plan it?" She let each word drop slowly from the edges of her mouth, sweetened with a tentative smile, and glanced at Anita.

"No," said Anita crisply, "we wouldn't like. Are we going to dinner or aren't we? _I'm_ starved."

Dennis was about to pick up his hat when Grace asked, "Would you--mind--if I ate with you? Blake has to go to dinner with some man."

"Oh, all right, come along. We're meeting some friends of Dennis's later."

"I have to leave you right after dinner," stated Grace.

It was always like that, Anita thought. Not that she objected to Grace's accompanying them when nothing better turned up--Grace often invited her along, made many kind attempts to include the social life of Anita, with Dennis, in the convolutions of her own. But Anita waited to be asked, while Grace, though it was she who had established the rule that neither should interfere with the other's engagements--Grace took it for granted that she was welcome, unless told otherwise. Anita repeated to herself that she had no right to resent trifles, considering all Grace had done for her.

She looked from her own work-day silk to Grace's clothes of leisure. "I suppose I ought to get dressed."

"No," she said suddenly, "I shan't bother." She walked into the bedroom to smooth her hair. She couldn't and wouldn't compete. Dennis ought to know by now that she was no beauty alongside of Grace. Besides, what was there to compete for anyhow?

Grace, following on her heels, offered, "You can wear my blue dress."

"Thanks. No."

Grace would not give advice, but she did think Anita was careless. "You ought to get--yourself--some more things," she said, with meaning. "Clothes--are an investment, Anita."

"An investment in what?"

"Well, you needn't be so scornful. Things like that--help."