On Saturday afternoon Qwilleran took Alacoque Wright to the ball park, and listened to her views on baseball.
"Of course," she said, "the game's basic appeal is erotic. All that symbolism, you know, and those sensual movements!" She was wearing something she had made from a bedspread. "Mrs. Middy custom-ordered it for a king-size bed," she explained, "and it was delivered in queen-size, so I converted it into a costume suit." Her converted bedspread was green corduroy with an irregular plush pile like rows of marching caterpillars.
"Very tasteful," Qwilleran remarked.
Cokey tossed her cascade of hair. "It wasn't intended to be tasteful. It was intended to be sexy." After dinner at a chophouse (Cokey had a crab leg and some stewed plums; Qwilleran had the works), the newsman said: "We're invited to a party tonight, and I'm going to do something rash. I'm taking you to meet a young man who is apparently irresistible to women of all ages, sizes, and shapes." "Don't worry," said Cokey, giving his hand a blithe squeeze. "I prefer older men." "I'm not that much older." "But you're so mature. That's important to a person like me." They rode to the Villa Verandah in a taxi, holding hands. At the building entrance they were greeted with enthusiasm by the doorman, whom Qwilleran had foresightedly tipped that afternoon. It was not a large tip by Villa Verandah standards, but it commanded a dollar's worth of attention from a man dressed like a nineteenth-century Prussian general.
They walked into the lofty lobby — all white marble, plate glass, and stainless steel — and Co key nodded approval.
She had become suddenly quiet. As they ascended in the automatic elevator, Qwilleran gave her a quick private hug.
The door to David's apartment was opened by a white-coated Oriental, and there was a flash of recognition when he saw Qwilleran. No one ever forgot the newsman's moustache. Then the host surged forward, radiating charm, and Cokey slipped her hand though Qwilleran's arm. He felt her grip tighten when Lyke acknowledged the introduction with his rumbling voice and drooping eyelids.
The apartment was filled with guests — clients of David's chattering about their analysts, and fellow decorators discussing the Spanish exhibition at the museum and the new restaurant in Greektown.
"There's a simply marvelous seventeenth-century Isabellina vargueno in the show." "The restaurant will remind you of that little place in Athens near the Acropolis. You know the one." Qwilleran led Cokey to the buffet. "When I'm with decorators," he said, "I feel I'm in a never- never land. They never discuss anything serious or unpleasant." "Decorators have only two worries: discontinued patterns and slow deliveries," Cokey said. "They have no real problems." There was scorn in the curl of her lips.
"Such disapproval can't be purely professional. I suspect you were jilted by a decorator once." "Or twice." She smoothed her long straight hair self-consciously. "Try these little crabmeat things. They've got lots of pepper in them." Although Qwilleran had dined recently and well, he had no difficulty in trying the lobster salad, the crusty brown potato balls flavored with garlic, the strips of ginger-spiced beef skewered on slivers of bamboo, and the hot buttered cornbread filled with ham. He had a feeling of well-being. He looked at Cokey with satisfaction. He liked her spirit, and the provocative face peeking out from that curtain of hair, and the coltish grace of her figure.
Then he glanced over her shoulder toward the living room, and suddenly Cokey looked plain. Natalie Noyton had arrived.
Harry Noyton's ex-wife was plump in all areas except for an incongruously small waist and tiny ankles. Her face was pretty, like a peach, and she had peach-colored hair ballooning about her head.
One of the decorators said, "How did you like the Wild West, Natalie?" "I didn't pay any attention to it," she replied in a small shrill voice. "I just stayed in a boarding-house in Reno and worked on my rug. I made one of those shaggy Danish rugs with a needle. Does anybody want to buy a handmade rug in Cocoa and Celery Green?" "You've put on weight, Natalie." "Ooh, have I ever! All I did was work on my rug and eat peanut butter. I love crunchy peanut butter. " Natalie was wearing a dress that matched her hair-a sheath of loosely woven wool with golden glints. A matching stole with long crinkly fringe was draped over her shoulders.
Cokey, who was giving Natalie an oblique inspection, said to Qwilleran: "That fabric must be something she loomed herself, in between peanut-butter sandwiches. It would have been smarter without the metallic threads." "What would an architect call that color?" he asked.
"I'd call it a yellow-pink of low saturation and medium brilliance." "A decorator would call it Cream of Carrot," he said, "or Sweet Potato Souffle." After Natalie had been welcomed and teased and flattered and congratulated by those who knew her, David Lyke brought her to meet Qwilleran and Cokey. He told her, "The Daily Fluxion might want to photograph your house in the Hills. What do you think?" "Do you want it photographed, David?" "It's your house, darling. You decide." Natalie said to Qwilleran: "I'm moving out as soon as I find a studio. And then my husband — my ex-husband — is going to sell the house." "I hear it's really something," said the newsman.
"It's super! Simply super! David has oodles of talent." She looked at the decorator adoringly.
Lyke explained: "I corrected some of the architect's mistakes and changed the window detail so we could hang draperies. Natalie wove the draperies herself. They're a work of art." "Well, look, honey," said Natalie, "if it will do you any good, let's put the house in the paper." "Suppose we let Mr. Qwilleran have a look at it." "All right," she said. "How about Monday morning? I have a hair appointment in the afternoon." Qwilleran said, "Do you have your looms at the house?" "Ooh, yes! I have two great big looms and a small one. I'm crazy about weaving. David, honey, show them that sports coat I did for you." Lyke hesitated for the flicker of an eyelid. "Darling, it's at the cleaner," he said. Later he remarked to Qwilleran: "I use some of her yardage out of friendship, but her work leaves a lot to be desired. She's just an amateur with no taste and no talent, so don't emphasize the hand-weaving if you publish the house." The evening followed the usual Lyke pattern: a splendid buffet, drinks in abundance, music for dancing played a trifle too loud, and ten conversations in progress simultaneously. It had all the elements of a good party, but Qwilleran found himself feeling troubled at David Lyke's last remark. At his first opportunity he asked Natalie to dance, and said, "I hear you're going into the weaving business on the professional level." "Yes, I'm going to do custom work for decorators," she said in her high-pitched voice that sounded vulnerable and pathetic. "David loves my weaving. He says he'll get me a lot of commissions." She was an ample armful, and the glittering wool dress she wore was delectably soft, except for streaks of scratchiness where the fabric was shot with gold threads.
As they danced, she went on chattering, and Qwilleran's mind wandered. If this woman was banking her career on David's endorsement, she was in for a surprise. Natalie said she was hunting for a studio, and she had a cousin who was a newspaperman, and she loved smoked oysters, and the balconies at the Villa Verandah were too windy. Qwilleran said he had just moved into an apartment there, but refrained from mentioning whose. He speculated on the chances of sneaking a few tidbits from the buffet for his cat.
"Ooh, do you have a cat?" Natalie squealed. "Does he like lobster?" "He likes anything that's expensive. I think he reads price tags." "Why don't you go and get him? We'll give him some lobster." Qwilleran doubted whether Koko would like the noisy crowd, but he liked to show off his handsome pet, and he went to get him. The cat was half asleep on his refrigerator cushion, and he was the picture of relaxation, sprawled on his back in a position of utter abandon, with one foreleg flung out in space and the other curled around his ears. He looked at Qwilleran upside down with half an inch of pink tongue protruding and an insane gleam in his slanted, half-closed eyes.
"Get up," said Qwilleran, "and quit looking like an idiot. You're going to a soire." By the time Koko arrived at the party, sitting on Qwilleran's shoulder, he had regained his dignity. At his entrance the noise swelled to a crescendo and then stopped altogether. Koko surveyed the scene with regal condescension, like a potentate honoring his subjects with his presence. He blinked not, neither did he move a whisker. His brown points were so artistically contrasted with his light body, his fur was shaded so subtly, and his sapphire eyes had such unadorned elegance that he made David Lyke's guests look gaudily overdressed.
Then the first exclamation broke through the silence, and everyone came forward to stroke the silky fur.
"Why, it feels like ermine!" "I'm going to throw out my mink." Koko tolerated the attention but remained aloof until Natalie spoke to him. He stretched his neck and sniffed her extended finger.
"Ooh, can I hold him?" she asked, and to Qwilleran's surprise Koko went gladly into her arms, snuggling in her woolly stole, sniffing it with serious concentration, and purring audibly.
Cokey pulled Qwilleran away. "It makes me so mad," she said, "when I think of all the trouble I take to stay thin and get my hair straightened and improve my conversation! Then she comes in, babbling and looking frizzy and thirty pounds overweight, and everybody goes for her, including the cat!" Qwilleran experienced a pang of sympathy for Cokey, mixed with something else. "I shouldn't leave Koko here too long, among all these strangers," he said. "It might upset his stomach. Let's take him back to 15-F, and you can have a look at my apartment." "I've brought my nutmeg grater," she said. "Do you happen to have any cream and ginger ale?" Qwilleran retrieved Koko from Natalie's stole, and led Cokey around the long curving corridor to the other wing.
When he threw open the door of his apartment, Cokey paused for one breathless moment on the threshold and then ran into the living room with her arms flung wide. "It's glorious!" she cried.
"Harry Noyton calls it Scandihoovian." "The green chair is Danish, and so is the endwood floor," Cokey told him, "and the dining chairs are Finnish. But the whole apartment is like a designers' Hall of Fame. Bertoia, Wegner, Aalto, Mies, Nakashima! It's too magnificent! I can't bear it!" She collapsed in the cushions of a suede sofa and put her face in her hands.
Qwilleran brought champagne glasses filled with a creamy liquid, and solemnly Cokey ground the nutmeg on the bubbling surface.
"To Co key, my favorite girl," he said, lifting his glass. "Skinny, straight-haired, and articulate!" "Now I feel better," she said, and she kicked off her shoes and wiggled her toes in the shaggy pile of the rug.
Qwilleran lighted his pipe and showed her the new issue of Gracious Abodes with the Allison living room on the cover.
They discussed its challenging shades of red and pink, the buxom ship's figurehead, and the pros and cons of four-poster beds with side curtains.
Koko was sitting on the coffee table with his back turned, pointedly ignoring the conversation. The curve of his tail, with its uplifted tip, was the essence of disdain, but the angle of his ears indicated that he was secretly listening.
"Hello, Koko," said the girl. "Don't you like me?" The cat made no move. There was not even the tremor of a whisker.
"I used to have a beautiful orange cat named Frankie," she told Qwilleran sadly. "I still carry his picture in my handbag." She extracted a wad of cards and snapshots from her wallet and sorted them on the seat of the sofa, then proudly held up a picture of a fuzzy orange blob.
"It's out of focus, and the color has faded, but it's all I have left of Frankie. He lived to be fifteen years old. His parentage was uncertain, but — " "Koko!" shouted Qwilleran. "Get away!" The cat had silently crept up on the sofa, and he was manipulating his long pink tongue.
Qwilleran said, "He was licking that picture." "Oh!" said Cokey, and she snatched up a small glossy photograph of a man. She slipped it into her wallet but not before Qwilleran had caught a glimpse of it. He frowned his displeasure as she went on talking about cats and grinding nutmeg into their cocktails.
"Now, tell me all about your moustache," Cokey said. "I suppose you know it's terribly glamorous." "I raised this crop in Britain during the war," said Qwilleran, "as camouflage." "I like it." It pleased him that she had not said "Which war?" as young women were inclined to do. He said: "To tell the truth, I'm afraid to shave it off. I have a strange feeling that these lip whiskers put me in touch with certain things — like subsurface truths and imminent happenings." "How wonderful!" said Cokey. "Just like cats' whiskers." "I don't usually confide this little fact. I wouldn't want it to get noised around." "I can see your point." "Lately I've been getting hunches about the theft of the Tait jades." "Haven't they found the boy yet?" "You mean the houseboy who allegedly stole the stuff? That's one of my hunches. I don't think he's the thief." Cokey's eyes widened. "Do you have any evidence?" Qwilleran frowned. "That's the trouble; I don't have a thing but these blasted hunches. The houseboy doesn't fit the role, and there's something fishy about the timing, and I have certain reservations about G. Verning Tait. Did you ever hear anything about a scandal in the Tait family?" Cokey shook her head.
"Of course, you were too young when it happened." Cokey looked at her watch. "It's getting late. I should be going home." "One more drink?" Qwilleran suggested. He went to the bar with its vast liquor supply and took the cream and ginger ale from the compact refrigerator.
Cokey began walking around the room and admiring it from every angle. "Everywhere you look there's beautiful line and composition," she said with rapture in her face. "And I love the interplay of textures — velvety, sleek, woolly, shaggy. And this rug! I worship this rug!" She threw herself down on the tumbled pile of the luxurious rug. She lay there in ecstasy with arms flung wide, and Qwilleran combed his moustache violently. She lay there, unaware that the cat was stalking her. With his tail curled down like a fishhook and his body slung low, Koko moved through the shaggy pile of the rug like a wild thing prowling through the underbrush. Then he sprang!
Cokey shrieked and sat up. "He bit me! He bit my head!" Qwilleran rushed to her side. "Did he hurt you?" Cokey ran her fingers through her hair. "No. He didn't actually bite me. He just tried to take a little nip. But he seemed so… hostile! Qwill, why would Koko do a thing like that?"