"We'd better," she giggled. "It's the wrong apartment."
So it was. They went downstairs to the right apartment which was identically square. The party was also identically Square.
"I liked the first one better," Lennox said.
They left and went uptown to the West side where Johnny Plummer owned a house opposite the Museum of Natural History. His party was more party-line than anything else. They were required to pay five dollars each as they entered ... in aid of some nebulous cause. No scotch was served in order to boycott Great Britain. Everyone sat around in tweeds and dirndls and sang the songs of the People to the accompaniment of an accordion and a mandolin. Lennox tried to drink up his five dollars in straight gin, but Olga gave him the out sign within half an hour.
"My turn now," she said and took him to the East side and a cosmopolitan-type party conducted in French, Dutch, Italian, Flemish and Swedish. This one, Lennox loved. He ate lobster stewed in absinthe, drank aquavit, learned Swedish massage, how to cut diamonds, when to hear an opera entitled "Teresa's Teats," where Kafka was buried, who was whose mistress at the party, and the particular sexual foibles of each of the guests. But Olga was party-hopping and impatient. She dragged him out.
"I liked it there," he complained.
"Too respectable. Where next?"
They went to Charlie Hansel's place in the Village. It was filled with ballet dancers; fag boys doing petit point in corners, sway-backed girls waddling with duck feet like pregnant women. They all talked shop to each other. They talked to nobody else.
"Out," said Lennox, yanking open the door and marching into a closet. Olga rescued him and guided him to fresh air. He was properly grateful and offered to kiss her in the taxi. She permitted this token of gratitude and startled him with her lips and tongue. He was relieved when the cab deposited them at the front door of a red brick converted stable, now a photographer's studio.
"Do I know him or do you?" Lennox inquired as he lurched in. He stared around the giant studio and rubbed his eyes. "Must be getting bloodshot," he mumbled.