The Heat of the Sun

party; Le Vol, a shabby scarecrow, moved as if to pursue him,
perhaps to strike him down, but guests in tuxedoes, furs, and spangly gowns milled too thickly to let him pass. Aunt Toolie, beside me, choked back a sob, thinking, no doubt, of those six floors of
luxury shopping; I put an arm around her, said, ‘All’s well that ends well!’ and she rested her head against my shoulder, watching in wonderment as her protégée
circled in the arms of Copley Wedger. We could forgive Trouble’s joke. ‘Sometimes, darling,’ Aunt Toolie said, ‘the world is a well-ordered place.’
    I agreed. The evening was over: the curtain, at that point, should have fallen on the comedy.
    But more was to come.
    Le Vol fought his way back to the elevators. Alarmed, I called his name and struggled after him. Oh, but I was drunk, drunk! Pain throbbed in my damaged leg, but I flung myself into his way,
cutting off his path, just before he could slip through the elevator door.
    ‘Come back to Wobblewood. I’m sorry about tonight.’
    ‘Me too. I told you about Wyoming and you weren’t even listening.’
    ‘I was.’ I had heard some of it.
    ‘And I thought you could come with me! We could be a team: Le Vol, the man who does the pictures; Sharpless, the man who does the words. Why not? You want to be a writer.’
    ‘I am a writer,’ I said, too loudly.
    Le Vol laughed. ‘You have to write about something, Sharpless. What have you written, since we left school?’
    ‘I’m working on a sonnet sequence.’
    ‘Sonnets? Didn’t anybody tell you this is 1927?’
    ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said. I would have added that several editors were eager to print my work, but at that moment my attention was diverted by passers-by: a band
of Orientals, three in a row, dressed identically in funereal suits. Something about them intrigued me, and I realized I had seen them, or others like them, before: already, through the shimmery
haze of this party, I had seen them many times, arms upraised with trays, backs bent to bow, heads nodding solemnly to others of their kind. They were servants: a private army of sleek, slender
young men with gleaming oiled hair and sallow, mask-like faces. The prince of this palazzo, it appeared, was a man of distinctive tastes.
    When I turned back to Le Vol, he was gone.
    And where might I find Trouble? It was useless. Bodies pressed hotly against me from all directions. An Oriental appeared at my side, proffering a champagne glass. I glugged from it
gratefully.
    Hours later, or perhaps only minutes, I found myself in a plush armchair, gazing at the dance floor. The lights had dimmed; the orchestra, behind music stands like monogrammed shields, played
one of the hits of those years in a languorously slow arrangement. Who... stole my heart away? Who... makes me dream all day? Stars blurred in my eyes: from the champagne, from the
chandeliers, from the lovely gowns. Brilliantine, diamonds, and blue driftings of smoke flared and died away in the elegant gloom. Gentlemanly hands, banded at the wrists in cuffs crisp as paper,
smoothed the naked backs of girls with shingled hair. Dreamy solemn faces turned in my direction, then turned away. Like a spectre, my spirit moved between the dancers.
    Far off I thought I saw Aunt Toolie towering over a portly, bald gentleman as she circled in his arms. Hardly handsome, but undoubtedly top drawer. Good old Aunt Toolie! I would always love
her.
    The band slipped seamlessly into another slow number.
    I thought about Le Vol. Naturally, I rejected his view of my life. But Greenwich Village was closing on me like a trap. Many a college crony had made his way to Paris and sent back ecstatic
reports about life on the Left Bank. Why languish in America, this puritanical backwater where money was all that mattered, where progress was measured in automobiles rolling off assembly lines,
and alcohol was illegal? ‘The business of America is business,’ said President Coolidge, but it was no business of mine. I asked myself if I had ever really been American: I was an
observer of Americans, that was all, tethered to their gravity but not of their world. Life beckoned – and where was life but Paris? In Paris, my talents would mature. I would master the
contemporary idiom. I would strike out on radical paths. I would sail away, gripping the railings of a Cunard liner, as the Statue of Liberty, and all its false promises, filled less and less of
the sky.
    Even