American Cocktail Party in Paris

The room was early modern. There was no color, nor did there seem to be any pleasant absence of it. The paneling had been scraped off the walls, but they had forgotten the cornice and the dirty white marble mantel. The chairs were too big or perhaps the room was too small. On the grand piano there was an elongated white china panther and a large photograph of a royal prince in a silver frame. One had the impression of being underground. A young man sang at the piano. The room was full of very tall women. There was a sad man with drooping mustaches who kept repeating that he ski-ed badly. There was a German who passed nuts and olives which nobody took and there was a butler who did nothing at all. There was myself looking at magazines which I had already seen, and there was an Italian count on the sofa whispering to lighthouse No. 1. She kept shaking her head to make her hair swish. She had very short, very red fingernails. The cocktails tasted like ether. The young man at the piano drank sherry and displayed a gold bracelet on his right wrist. He sang “Mariposa,” and then suddenly he yodeled.