“Why not?” I asked.
She said, “My God, Donald, use your head! For years I was weighing around two hundred and seventy-five pounds. Somebody was always inviting me out to dinner and throwing a Louis the Quinze chair at me, some damn spindle-legged imitation of a narrow-seated, lozenge-backed abortion in mahogany.”
“Did you sit in them?” I asked.
“Sit in them, hell! I wouldn’t have minded so much if the hostesses had used their heads, but none of them did. They’d lead the crowd into the dining-room, and then rd stand and look at what had been assigned as a parking place for my fanny. In place of doing anything, the nitwit hostess would stand there, looking first at me and then at the damn chair. You’d think it was the first time she’d realized I had to sit down when I ate. One of them told me afterward she just didn’t know what to do, because she was afraid I’d feel conspicuous if she had the maid bring me another chair.
“I told her that wouldn’t make me feel half as conspicuous as sitting down on one of those gingersnaps on ornamental stilts and having the damn thing fold up with me like a collapsed accordion. I hate the stuff.”
We prowled around the apartment some more. Bertha Cool picked a studio couch, tried it tentatively, then finally settled back, opened her purse, fished out a cigarette, and said, “I don’t see we’re a damn bit nearer what we want than when we started.”
I didn’t say anything.
She scraped a match on the sole of her shoe, lit the cigarette, glowered at me belligerently, and said, “Well?”
I said, “She lived here.”
“What if she did?”