Free The Secret History by Donna Tartt Page B

going to blow out my nose.
    “Bathing beauties?” He winked. “Beach Blanket Bingo?”
    “You bet.”
    He was pleased. Like some jolly old dog of an uncle, he leaned across the table even further and began to tell me about his own girlfriend, whose name was Marion. “I know you’ve seen her,” he said. “Just a little thing. Blond, blue-eyed, about so high?”
    Actually, this rang a bell. I had seen Bunny in the post office,in the first week of school, talking rather officiously to a girl of this description.
    “Yep,” said Bunny proudly, running his finger along the edge of his glass. “She’s my gal. Keeps
me
in line, I can tell you.”
    This time, caught in mid-swallow, I laughed so hard I was close to choking.
    “And she’s an elementary-education major, too, don’t you love it?” he said. “I mean, she’s a real
girl
.” He drew his hands apart, as if to indicate a sizable space between them. “Long hair, got a little meat on her bones, isn’t afraid to wear a dress. I like that. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t care much for the brainy ones. Take Camilla. She’s fun, and a good guy and all—”
    “Come on,” I said, still laughing. “She’s really pretty.”
    “That she is, that she is,” he agreed, holding up a conciliatory palm. “Lovely girl. I’ve always said so. Looks just like a statue of Diana in my father’s club. All she lacks is a mother’s firm hand, but still, for my money, she’s what you call a bramble rose, as opposed to your hybrid tea. Doesn’t take the pains she ought, you know. And runs around half the time in her brother’s sloppy old clothes, which maybe some girls could get away with—well, frankly I don’t think
any
girls can
really
get away with it, but she certainly can’t. Looks too much like her brother. I mean to say, Charles is a handsome fellow and a sterling character all around, but I wouldn’t want to marry him, would I?”
    He was on a roll and was about to say something else; but then, quite suddenly, he stopped, his face souring as if something unpleasant had occurred to him. I was puzzled, yet a little amused; was he afraid he’d said too much, afraid of seeming foolish? I was trying to think of a quick change of subject, to let him off the hook, but then he shifted in his chair and squinted across the room.
    “Look there,” he said. “Think that’s us? It’s about time.”

    Despite the vast amount we ate that afternoon—soups, lobsters, pâtés, mousses, an array appalling in variety and amount—we drank even more, three bottles of Taittinger on top of the cocktails, and brandy on top of that, so that, gradually, our table became the sole hub of convergence in the room, around which objects spun and blurred at a dizzying velocity. I kept drinking from glasses which kept appearing as if by magic, Bunny proposing toasts to everything from Hampden College to Benjamin Jowett to Periclean Athens, and the toasts becoming purpler andpurpler as time wore on until, by the time the coffee arrived, it was getting dark. Bunny was so drunk by then he asked the waiter to bring us two cigars, which he did, along with the check, face down, on a little tray.
    The dim room was whirling at what was now an incredible rate of speed, and the cigar, so far from helping that, made me see as well a series of luminous spots that were dark around the edges, and reminded me unpleasantly of those horrible one-celled creatures that I used to have to blink at through a microscope till my head swam. I put it out in the ashtray, or what I thought was the ashtray but was in fact my dessert plate. Bunny took off his gold-rimmed spectacles, unhooking them carefully from behind each ear, and began to polish them with a napkin. Without them, his eyes were small and weak and amiable, watery with smoke, crinkled at the edges with laughter.
    “Ah. That was some lunch, wasn’t it, old man?” he said around the cigar clamped in his teeth, holding the glasses to the light