“The Bee Sting,” I said.
Maxine smiled, a little smear of lipstick on her tooth. “Good,” she said to me. “Smart.”
“Don’t do it,” he said. “She’ll break you.”
“The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny,” I said, trying again.
“I finished it two weeks ago.” She turned to Eddie. “If the party had been three weeks ago, she would have had me.”
Eddie shook his head. “She says things like this to keep you playing. Chances are she finished it six months ago.”
I felt like I was at a slot machine. “Independent People.”
“Halldór Laxness, Iceland, published in two volumes in 1934 and ’35. That’s an excellent choice.”
“She really does take the air out of the room, doesn’t she?” I said to Eddie.
“This one’s smart,” Maxine said. “New editor?”
“Daphne is my daughter,” Eddie said. It was his story for the night.
Maxine looked at the two of us together. The room wasgetting louder by the minute. There was a bottleneck of traffic coming into the bar and we were part of the problem. “We should move,” I said, raising my voice.
“This is the story I want to hear,” Maxine said, not moving.
“It’s a long one,” Eddie said, also raising his voice. “You’ll like it.”
“I’ll take you to lunch next week. I want you to tell it to me someplace I can hear you.” Maxine turned to me. “Daphne Triplett, it was a pleasure to meet you.”
I told her the pleasure was mine, and maybe I meant it. I got a kick out of Maxine. I watched the crowd open slightly and then swallow her up. “I wonder if I’ll meet somebody tonight who calls me Daphne Fuller,” I said to Eddie.
“Give it time. There’s bound to be a doctor here somewhere who worked with your husband.”
“Isn’t there something, I don’t know,combativeabout introducing me to people as your daughter when they all know you don’t have a daughter?”
“Probably,” Eddie said, killing his drink. “‘Combative’ is a good word.”
“You know, if you’re not having fun, we could always call Leda, see if she and Steve want to meet us for dinner?”
“Too much trouble,” Eddie said over the noise.
“It wouldn’t be any trouble.”
He tapped a stud on his tuxedo shirt, the noise reducing us to gesture. “I’d get in too much trouble.”
The room smelled like flowers, like competing perfumes, like white wine. The louder the party became, the easier it was to be there. We went through a period of shouted introductions, which in turn gave way to pantomime, Eddie pointing to me, mesmiling, hands shaken, then people pointing to the bar, tipping back an imaginary glass. He knew everyone.
Then a waiter came by, tapping a mallet against a three-note xylophone, as if we were at the opera and the second act was about to begin. (The second act was about to begin!) We all filed into the dining room.
The white linen tablecloths were strewn with another garden-load of flowers, arranged low enough that we could see across the table, votive candles dotted around. The message was that, despite the enormous amount of money spent on this evening, the hostess was fun, still playful, natural. The five tables of ten were set with place cards: Polly and Skip anchored table one, with each of their four married children and their spouses anchoring tables two through five. Eddie walked me to each table and introduced me to the Hotallings and the Hotalling partners: two sons married to women, two daughters married to men, eight people who referred to Eddie as uncle.
“Alex,” Eddie said when we stopped at table five, “I want you to meet my daughter, Daphne Fuller.”
Alex (then Sam, then Mae-Mae, then Nanette, and all of their beloveds) shook my hand and commented on the fact that Eddie didn’t have a daughter. “What closet have you been keeping her in?” Alex (Sam, Mae-Mae, Nanette) asked.
“I had an entire life before you were born,” he told them. “Daphne is the best part of that earlier incarnation.”
Mae-Mae, a woman who combined her mother’s power and unfriendliness with her father’s beauty and height, put her arm around Eddie. “Uncle, does this mean she’s getting my inheritance?”
