Читаем Fall and Rise полностью

“She looks miraculous, doesn’t she? Brides. Boy, they all do, even the ugly ones, though she wasn’t ugly before. Till now she was near to being beautiful. A borderline beauty I’ll call her. Not a natural beauty I can say — not like you, if you’ll excuse me — tut tut, got carried away,” and he slaps his wrist. “But tonight — you do excuse me, don’t you?”

“Sure, but no more — for my own reasons.”

“What are they?”

“Please, my own reasons. Reverse egotism, which sounds like the reverse of it, but what do you want me to say? Tonight Dorothy what?”

“Tonight she’s truly beautiful, which isn’t merely her dress and happiness but is also very much tied up with her knowing we all know she’s a beautiful ecstatic bride.”

“I’m sorry, you lost me there a little. And sure, sit if you like; at least don’t stand. Don’t know how much chitchat I’m good for. I’m a bit tired tonight.”

“No problem, honestly. I usually don’t talk this much too.” He sits. “So, what do you do?”

“What do I do? I didn’t say so on the dance floor? I’m a dance instructress.”

“Of course you are.”

“Really showed. Stepped a few more times on your toes than I should have.”

“It wasn’t that. In fact, you were extremely graceful.”

“Graceful I’m not. And extremely? Would you believe I once studied to be a dancer? True, true, and people — ballet instructors, older dancers — said I had a gift for it too. But I lost the body for it. Got too top-heavy for one thing and a bit too bottom-heavy too.”

“You’ve a fine figure.”

“Fine, maybe — I don’t know — but for classical dancing? — no. By the time I was fourteen the figure had filled out too much, despite what I did to stop it — you just can’t reduce bones — and I couldn’t, well, float the way I wanted to over a ballet stage. I was devastated.”

“So what kind of work did you end up doing?”

“You still don’t believe I’m a dance instructress? No, we went over that.”

“Champagne?” the waiter says, pouring more champagne into my empty glass.

“Not for me thanks, really. Take it away.”

“It’s a wedding reception. Drink, be gay. It’s luck for the bride and groom if you do. You don’t and then he and next everyone here, this’ll all go to waste. It’s paid for and the barmen will hide the unused bottles as if they been drunk.”

“That’s the wedding couple’s problem,” Arthur says, “—the mother.”

“It should be ours too. Sophie should know.”

“Don’t tell her I told,” the waiter says. “Anyhow, it isn’t so. I only said it to get you to drink. Tell folks something’ll only go to waste and they stuff their faces with it, but nothing like a happy occasion. I love it when all my people I serve get drunk. They get zonked enough — hey, they don’t see me knocking down some too. Not serious. Yours?” he says to Arthur.

“Why not? Any one of these glasses. In fact, I’ll drink hers, mine and yours.”

“Hooo, bad guy — candy from babies. But it’s people like you who make for great parties.” He fills all the glasses on this side of the dais, says to Arthur “Persuade her,” and goes.

“Crazy guy,” Arthur says, downing his glass. “So, after all that, what do you do?”

“Really, it’s all sort of boring to me now, my work. But you’re so interested in learning what I do — no, this won’t make any sense — Hi, Soph, dance a jig, kid, ‘cause tomorra you’ll be broke. Not serious, as the waiter says. I’m not — Oh God, what did I say? — Sorry, Soph, but it’s your champagne. It’s too good,” and I try to roll my eyes while I roll my head. She waves, puts her fingers to her ears that she didn’t hear, foxtrots to the middle of the floor with Sven, people crowd around them clapping in unison, Dorothy taps Sven’s shoulder and cuts in to dance with her mother and the clapping crowd cheers them. “I’m so embarrassed. To bring up the cost of this overpriced garish party. And the cake hasn’t even been wheeled out yet. I’m supposed to — how am I going to? — stand beside them while they cut it, with its three different-colored tiers and the edible naked couple standing on top right down to the pink nipples, detumescent penis and Dorothy’s dark and Sven’s yellow pubic hair. Arthur, I’ve got to be crocked, or close to it. Say something that will make me think I wasn’t that crude to Sophia or that she really didn’t hear.”

“I don’t see how she couldn’t’ve.”

“Great help.”

“What do I do did you start to ask me before?”

“Right — good. I was. Then I don’t know what. Just answer. Pay no attention to what I say.”

“Lawyer. Tax law. Might sound boring, but it’s fairly exciting if you’re interested in psychology and people and petty — and, you know, right on up the ladder — thievery.”

“Doesn’t sound boring. Doesn’t sound too exciting, but everyone has to do something. See how smart I am? Ready for more painstaking cerebration and fancy wording? It’s nice to make a good living. I’m sure you do or enough to leave reasonably well on—live on.”

“I don’t complain.”