Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith (best books to read now .TXT) 📕

arrived early, at a quarter to nine, so that Melinda could be on hand to welcome Charley, who was coming at nine, and to introduce him to the Cowans. Only the Mellers were there as yet, sitting with the Cowans on the side terrace where there were more lanterns and a huge bowl of punch that stood on a low table surrounded by glasses.

       "Hello, there!" Evelyn greeted them. "Well, look at Cleopatra!"

       "'Good' evening," Melinda said, slinking up the terrace steps in her trailing green dress, puffing on her serpentine cigarette holder which she carried on a forefinger. She had even put a henna rinse in her hair.

       "And Cicero?" Horace said to Vic.

       "It could be," Vic admitted, "but that's not what I intended." "Ah, Tiberius," Horace said.

       "Thank you, Horace." He had mentioned to Horace that he was interested in Tiberius lately, and was reading all he could find on him. "And you?" Vic peered with amusement at Horace waistline that had been enlarged with a pillow. "A Venetian Santa Claus, perhaps?"

       Horace laughed. "You're way off! I'll let you guess."

       But Vic was distracted from guessing because Evelyn was pressing a glass of punch upon him.

       "It's the last you'll 'have' to drink, if you don't like it, Vic, darling, but you've got to drink one tonight for luck!" Evelyn said.

       Vic lifted his glass to Phil Cowan. "Here's to 'Buried Treasures,' Vic' said. "May they be uncovered."

       'Buried Treasures' was the title of Phil's book. Phil bowed and thanked him.

       The MacPhersons arrived, got up as a couple of Vikings, costume that was singularly fitting for Mrs. MacPherson's tall sturdy figure and her broad, fat, faintly pink face. The MacPhersons were in their fifties, but they had been sporting enough to wear knee-high skirts and sandals with straps that crisscrossed up their respectively fat and skinny calves, and they looked extremely pleased by the roar of laughter they caused as they came on to the terrace.

       Evelyn put some music on the phonograph, and Phil and Melinda started to dance in the living room. Two more cars arrived. Two couples walked up the lawn, followed by Mr. De Lisle in his white dinner jacket. He hung back from the advancing group, looking around for Melinda. Vic pretended not to have seen him. But Melinda, hearing the hubbub of greetings, came out on the terrace, saw Charley and rushed to him, taking him by the hand.

       "You might at least have come as Chopin!" Melinda cried, a sentence she had probably made up days ago to say. "I'd like you all to meet Charley De Lisle!" she announced to everybody. "This is Mr. and Mrs. Cowan, our hosts, Mr. and Mrs. MacPherson—" She waited for De Lisle to mumble his "How do you do?"—"Mr. and Mrs. Meller—the Wilsons, Don and June—Mrs. Podnansky and Mr—''

       "Kenny," said the young man who was one of the young men Melinda had danced with at the Fourth of July dance at the club.

       "Mr. De Lisle is going to play for us this evening," Melinda said.

       There was a murmur of interest and a small patter of hands. Charley looked uncomfortable and nervous. Melinda got him a glass of punch, then took him into the house, pointing out the piano at the back of the living room as if the house were her own. The Wilsons also looked a bit ill at ease, standing near the punch howl. Wilson was probably too hot in his raincoat, tightly belted with its collar turned up, and he also wore a hat with its brim pulled down. Some detective story writer, Vic supposed. He had not taken much trouble with his costume, but he was rather shamefacedly carrying a pipe, and his scowl perhaps went with whatever character he was trying to portray. His slender blond wife was barefoot and dressed in a sleazy something like a short nightgown of pale blue. Either Trilby or a sharecropper, Vic thought.

       Vic felt awkward and bored from the start, and he was utterly sober at the end of his first glass of punch, though he had joined Melinda, at her insistence, in a stiff one before they left the house. It was one of those evenings when he was going to stay stone sober the whole night, even if he had several more drinks, and when every moment between twelve-thirty, when De Lisle would return from Ballinger, and five or whenever Melinda chose to go home, was going to drag, and was going to be excruciating as well because of having to listen to De Lisle's scintillating piano from twelve-thirty onward.

       Mr. De Lisle was at the piano already, grinding it out, and Melinda was leaning over him, beaming like a mother showing off a prodigy. Vic could see them from the terrace through the tall picture windows of the house. He moved toward the terrace steps,

       passing the Wilsons, who were talking with Phil at the punch bowl.

       "How are you?" Vic said to both the Wilsons, making himself smile. "Glad to see you."

       The Wilsons acknowledged it timidly. Maybe their main trouble was shyness, Vic thought. At any rate, they were infinitely preferable socially to Charley De Lisle, who, Vic had just realized, had not even looked at him when Melinda had been introducing him on the terrace, though Vic had been looking at him. Which reminded Vic that both De Lisle 'and' Melinda were retaliating for his not having spoken to De Lisle the day he was in the Chesterfield with Horace. Melinda had reprimanded Vic for it the next day. 'I hear you were in the Chesterfield bar and you didn't even speak to Charley!'. Vic lifted his head and took a deep breath of fresh air as he strolled out farther on the lawn. The air was sweet with the honeysuckle that grew on the Cowans' low stone wall at the edge of the lawn, but as he passed a