Pretty Leslie by R. V. Cassill Page B

I thought—”
    â€œSure,” he said, “sure.” He stood up and wiped his hands on his pants. “I’ll tell you. I do them better in the light than down here where it’s dim. Let’s go up to the kitchen in about five, ten minutes and I will bewilder and astound you. O.K.?” He had, he indicated, just a few more drinks to serve. Then he was hers.
    As she turned away from him she saw that Leslie was back.
    No. Leslie had never been gone. There across the room she stood beguiling her little group of listeners with a story. Her hands were up in front of her face, making a cartoon in the air. Her splendid figure was all twisted with the effort of making some comedy real enough so nothing would exist for the others except the moment of hilarity and illusion. Of course she had never left the party.
    Well, of course she had. Had got back just in time to make the shrewdest watcher concede that no serious offense could have been committed in her absence. She had only been teasing and—the shrewdest observer thought with a sigh—probably did not even realize how she teased so many people all at once.
    There—over there—was cadaverous David Lloyd trying to calm his wife, no doubt telling her that however she felt about leaving parties at a civilized hour, he damn well needed a stiff drink. Anyone might after a disappointment with Leslie.
    In love again, sadly, Dolores thought: She doesn’t see at all. God, be kind to this house. Whether they deserve it or not, they need it.

chapter 5
    I N THE BASEMENT there was still dancing. The muted, commercial lasciviousness of South American music could be heard up in the kitchen like a rumor of unlikely depravity. The hostess, once again, was dancing. She would go on while guests remained who wanted to dance. And Ben, as he had been doing all evening, was herding the strays—who wanted to talk medicine, who did not want to dance with their own husbands, who drank too much too quickly (he had had to mop the upstairs bathroom where Anita Short had missed the stool), whose rhythm of gaiety would not match the central rhythm of the party.
    Now he was in the kitchen doing sleight of hand for Dolores—not because she had seemed a stray, but because he had promised Leslie to consider her as one. Sue Wilder and Harley Short (whom Ben had helped put Anita to sleep in the back seat of the car parked on the lawn) were also watching, while behind them Jenny Cressman was prowling Leslie’s kitchen, estimating whether she could afford one like it.
    Ben opened his palm. “I’m sorry, Harley. Are you sure you gave me a five? You saw him give me a five, Dolores? No. It was only a one. See?” He unfolded the bill. George Washington looked down his nose.
    Sue Wilder grabbed his fingers quickly and forced them apart. No five-dollar bill fell from between them. “You were palming the one,” she said.
    â€œOf course,” Ben said. He timed his stare into her eyes and the subsequent smile with the sureness of a fly-fisherman drawing a trout to his net. “How?”
    She shook her head in stubborn bewilderment and began to rifle his sleeves, his breast pocket, shirt pocket, and even the collar of his shirt. “Where’s the five?” she demanded. “Ah, baby, what’d you do with it?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter what he did with it,” Jenny Cressman said from ten feet away. “The point is how well he did the trick.”
    â€œDid you learn that as practice for surgery?” Dolores wanted to know.
    Ben nodded.
    â€œBut you don’t do surgery?” she asked. “You’d be very good at it. You’d be a good magician, too, if you had to make your living that way. Cy and I knew some. We went a couple of times to the magicians’ convention.” Her face began to convulse with some memory, selected like a cookie for a grandchild from the sweet-smelling jar of the past.