"You're disgusting!" she spat.
"No. Decoyed. Mowss-trapped. Shoulda known. You smell like babies."
"Let me out of here!" she hissed. She edged past him. He burst out laughing and flipped his hands up under her skirt. She screamed again and ran, slamming the door behind her. Lennox sat on the floor and laughed. Then he wept. He climbed to the edge of the blanket chest and sat with his arm around the dress form.
"Love on'y you, Gabby. On'y wantbe with you. On'y you, sweetheart."
The door of the sewing room burst open. A nude woman in a green stole berated him blurrily. Something about a bitch girl pulling a crying jag on some anonymous named Stacy and sneaking out to alley cat with him. The woman in the stole considered herself robbed. She blamed Lennox. He arose with dignity.
"Bringum backal ive," he said. He tottered to the foyer, picked up a bottle of scotch and wondered about his coat. He went back up the Early American hall to the Colonial bedroom and peered into the mound of clothes on the four-poster. He pulled coats, hats and trousers off the top. A left hand was revealed, thrusting up stiffly out of the coke-black mass. Lennox let out a hoarse cry and backed away. He turned and ran blindly out of the apartment, trying to erase the memory of maggots.
Yorkville was blazing with holiday lights. Festoons of red, white and green bulbs arched over the streets. Lennox blinked and blundered into a Hofbrau on Third Avenue which was aswarm with gemütlich-type celebration. A sign of burnt leather hung over the bar between moose antlers. It read: Wein-Weib-Gesang! Underneath it hung its translation: Whiskey. Women. Swing.
"No. No. No." Lennox said indignantly. "Should be wine-women'n song. Yes?" He gazed up and down the bar trying to count the customers. "Want t'buy set-ups f'the house."
"Drinks?" the bartender inquired in a genuine low Dutch dialect.
"Set-ups." Lennox displayed his bottle. He lurched playfully up and down the bar, pouring drinks for his friends into their beer, their rye, their cognacs, their wine glasses. He was quelled with difficulty. Accord was restored when he planked fifty dollars down on the bar and requested demon rum for his playmates.