“A long time,” synchronously growled the other. Tom heard him and laughed.
“And the painting?”
Tom and Darby Lunn were lost together in talk. From the table’s farther end Durthal saw them together. The laugh of Dounia Smith, the shrill sneer of Lettie tossing her heels, the mutter of Lagora were a wave, gathering, crumpling upon the calm of Signora Sanni. Durthal extricated himself from Hill and Miss Gross. He headed through the disserried chairs. Stretched arms reached for wine and tastes of antipasto. The evening splintered and swirled. Food would draw it together.
Durthal stood over Tom.
“Here, old man. Change over. You sit between us.”
Finding his seat, he also had the sense of haven beneath the spray and scatter of the room.
Of the three, Tom was the only one whose voice carried beyond them: laughing. Dounia Smith eyed him with a tilt of her head. A finger, like a talon, flecked her cigarette. Her brows were thin and straight like the stroke of a sharp pencil on hard paper.
Flora Sanni stood above the table, with a vast white bowl of minestrone. The crowd coalesced.
The table narrowed. The chandelier, relic of fluted brass and drooping crystal, took on the tawdry tone of office and gave its light, self-consciously, heatedly, like an old servant, too laden with memory and years to want to work for so crass a gathering. The carved clock ticked: a clatter of plates drew down bent necks, beading foreheads. Sharp streakings of sound ribboned the table: swathed it: covered it with a warm liquidity. Then the whipped undertone of selves seeped up again, lapped over the inorganic sound, deluged it, drowned it in angular surge of assertions.