Page:Angna Enters - Among the Daughters.djvu/429

 the tricks Day uses. I tried to change the subject and asked how long she had lived in this swell apartment.

"'Oh,' she said, 'the girls and I have been here only a few weeks. Horta sublet it for us from the owners who are in Italy. We'll have to get out when they come back—or sooner, if the tenants in the building find out. So far, we're protected—Piselli fixed it for Horta.'

"Then the phone rang and she answered it and it was Horta. I could hear her croaking voice and that whistle in her throat. She asked if I was there and was everything okay? Lorna said 'Yes dear, just fine dear, everything is fine dear. See you tomorrow dear.' She hung up and said 'That was Horta. She wanted to make sure you are having a good time. She's a darling. We girls are very grateful to her for setting us up in a swell place like this for the summer. We met her through Piselli because she wanted to give a bang-up party for that Spaniard he's doing business with.'

"'Isn't she coming?' I asked her.

"Lorna looked at me surprised and said 'Oh, she wouldn't come to this kind of party.'

"All of a sudden, maybe because I'd had all that champagne, it was as if I were having a nightmare while wide awake. It was as if New York and being a première danseuse and even Congress was a dream you have while asleep, but what was real now was the nightmare I had had about Horta pushing me into that next room at the Crofter Hotel. That night in Denver I wanted to look through the keyhole but Mother said no. But now I was in the room and I couldn't remember who opened the door. Horta, or myself. Whose fault it was. And maybe because I was dizzy and drunk, there was a big black bull with his head down, bleeding, so tired-looking he seemed to be wobbling on his feet, and I thought of what Vermillion had said about dominating the bull and not wanting to see a world of lowered heads and how I misunderstood then what he was talking about. I suddenly saw what he meant was that the world tries to make you something you don't want to be, and I understood why, every now and then, when I was with Lyle and, at the end, with Carly, I always kept thinking of the girls at the Crofter Hotel, and I was jerking and shaking when I came to and heard Lorna saying, 'You need a Bromo Seltzer, dear,' and the minute I was alone I put on my coat and slipped out. I walked and walked in the drizzle and then got on top of a bus and rode to the Square and back up to 155th and then I came home. I felt dirty. I feel dirty. I can't get the faces of those girls out of my mind. Trying so hard Rh