His arm was like plaster when he put it round her to dance with her. High ashy walls broke and crackled within him. He was soaring like a fireballoon on the smell of her hair.
“Get up on your toes and walk in time to the music.... Move in straight lines that’s the whole trick.” Her voice cut the quick coldly like a tiny flexible sharp metalsaw. Elbows joggling, faces set, gollywog eyes, fat men and thin women, thin women and fat men rotated densely about them. He was crumbling plaster with something that rattled achingly in his chest, she was an intricate machine of sawtooth steel whitebright bluebright copperbright in his arms. When they stopped her breast and the side of her body and her thigh came against him. He was suddenly full of blood steaming with sweat like a runaway horse. A breeze through an open door hustled the tobaccosmoke and the clotted pink air of the restaurant.
“Herf I want to go down to see the murder cottage; please take me.”
“As if I hadn’t seen enough of X’s marking the spot where the crime was committed.”
In the hall George Baldwin stepped in front of them. He was pale as chalk, his black tie was crooked, the nostrils of his thin nose were dilated and marked with little veins of red.
“Hello George.”
His voice croaked tartly like a klaxon. “Elaine I’ve been looking for you. I must speak to you.... Maybe you think I’m joking. I never joke.”
“Herf excuse me a minute.... Now what is the matter George? Come back to the table.”
“George I was not joking either.... Herf do you mind ordering me a taxi?”
Baldwin grabbed hold of her wrist. “You’ve been playing with me long enough, do you hear me? Some day some man’s going to take a gun and shoot you. You think you can play me like all the other little sniveling fools.... You’re no better than a common prostitute.”