The original of Laura

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Her husband, she answered, was a writer, too — at least, after a fashion. Fat men beat their wives, it is said, and he certainly looked fierce, when he caught her riffling through his papers. He pretended to slam down a marble paperweight and crush this weak little hand (displaying the little hand in febrile motion). Actually she was searching for a silly business letter — and not in the least trying to decipher his mysterious manuscript. Oh no, it was not a work of fiction which one dashes off, you know, to make money; it was a mad neurologist's testament, a kind of Poisonous Opus as in that film. It had cost him, and would still cost him, years of toil, but the thing was of course, an absolute secret. If she mentioned it at all, she added, it was because she was drunk. She wished to be taken home or preferably to some cool quiet place with a clean bed and room service. She wore a strapless gown and slippers of black velvet. Her bare insteps were as white as her young shoulders. The party seemed to have degenerated into a lot of sober eyes staring at her with nasty compassion from every corner, every cushion and ashtray, and even from the hills of the spring night framed in the open french window. Mrs. Carr, her hostess, repeated what a pity it was that Philip could not come or rather that Flora could not have induced him to come! I'll drug him next time, said Flora, rummaging all around her seat for her small formless vanity bag, a blind black puppy. Here it is, cried an anonymous girl, squatting quickly. Mrs. Carr's nephew, Anthony Carr, and his wife Winny, were one of those easy — going, over-generous couples that positively crave to lend their flat to a friend, any friend, when they and their dog do not happen to need it.

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