Sex & Rage. Eve Babitz

Charlie Chaplin. He was small, only five feet nine, with narrow shoulders, but his clothes were immaculate and his hand, when Jacaranda was offered it to shake, was as tempting and tended as though it had been kept fit for a king. His voice sounded abrasive, nervous, and his purple eyes darted around the apartment, never once looking at Max, while Max just stood leaning on one foot—a tall drink of water—waiting for Etienne to give up. But Etienne wasn’t going to give up; he would assess every hint, every clue, every past iota of data, and finally the information would link up and he’d know everything. Etienne said, holding out his tended hand, “You are Jacaranda Leven.”

      Max, the joke on himself, nearly collapsed with laughter as he recounted, tears streaming down his face, the “potatoes au gratin” line and the “Phoenix” touch. But Etienne stood as still as a stag in a forest waiting for his own instinct, his own information, to come in as he looked at the surfboard, looked carefully at what was painted on the surfboard and how it was painted, looked with piercing exactitude; he looked at the no furniture, he looked at an open closet. He looked at Jacaranda and his judgment of how her skin would feel that night in the dark with the jasmine all around them was nearly perfect, except that he hadn’t quite known she’d be that satiny—for women with skin as satiny as hers are not so easily found. His eyes slid to the back bedroom where bookcases lined all the walls to the ceiling and he saw, from a distance of thirty feet, a group of books familiar enough to him in their paperback form to recognize as he said, “I see you read C. P. Snow. What’s a girl like you reading him? He doesn’t know a thing about power.” Etienne snapped, “Not one thing.”

      “Oh,” Jacaranda said. She’d so hoped that reading C. P. Snow would tell her all she needed to know about the manipulations of powerful serious people so she wouldn’t have to be such a provincial.

      “Well . . .” Jacaranda sighed. “If that diamond ring don’t shine . . .”

      “I beg your pardon?” He formally cocked his head.

      “What would you suggest I read?” she asked.

      “Oh.” He shrugged. “Max knows about books. I never read.”

      “What race are you from?” Jacaranda asked.

      “The brown race,” he told her, opening the white silk right side of his made-in-Milan jacket to take out a tortoiseshell cigarette case and offer her a cigarette, which he then lit with a gold Cartier lighter.

      “What a pretty bunch of stuff,” Jacaranda said.

      “Like it?” he asked.

      “I love it,” she said.

      “I give it to you,” he said, laying the lighter and the cigarette case down on the orange crate.