Waiters rolled back a series of frosted-glass doors. The private dining room was thus included in the main salon of the club. More people—perhaps two hundred—were sitting at tables, over the middles and the ends of dinners, and over highballs, and planter’s punches, and even cocktails. The lights went down. A conical spot found the center of the dance floor and a master of ceremonies skidded into it, dragging a microphone. He began to make jokes.
Jimmie rose from the table, without apology, and walked through the smoke-tangled murk. There were men in the billiard room—talking about the war. From somewhere underneath the building he heard the roll and crash of bowling. He found an alcove off the foyer. It contained a few chairs and tables—and no people. He sat down and shut his eyes.
“You were pretty grim, you know,” a husky voice said.
He looked up. She was standing in front of him, deliberately close to him; her golden dress had been poured over her molten and dripped heavily from her hips and her arms. “I—I—oh, well. Sit down.” She sat down. Jimmie thought for a while. “Look. You can explain it, maybe, Miss—Whatever your name is.”
“Audrey.”
“Audrey. I thought, in England, that America had raised billions, and turned over its factories, and become the arsenal of democracy, and I thought there were a few dissenters. Lindbergh. Wheeler. I understood that we went into the last war as if it was fun. I knew people weren’t—ecstatic—about things now. But everybody goes at me as if I had a thriller to tell. South African big-game story. And whenever I seem to show that I’m about to speak out for England people start throwing words as if they were dishes, before they hear me.”
“You’ll get over it,” Audrey said. “You’ve obviously been too close to things. Lost your perspective. I could see that you despised them. After a while, though, you’ll like them. You’ll begin to understand our attitude. You’ll get your courage back.”
He sat up stiffly. “Get my courage back?”
“Certainly. Oh, I suppose you have plenty of the bravura kind left—for going outdoors in raids—all that. But I mean the courage to face the fact that the world is just going to change—and the sooner we Americans get used to the idea, the better.” She lifted one shoulder prettily. “I can read you, Jimmie. Put it this way. You’ll find out enough from these really sound people to be able to give up your loyalties to the old Europe. The rotten old Europe.”
“Will!?”