“Yes, I can imagine Tom as compost.”

           “We all can.”

           “I must say he has the gifts for it.”

           To Tom’s right sat E.M. Forster, a rumpled looking man in a worn tuxedo, who had he been a book might have surely been a dog-eared book, she was certain, and Mr. Dog-Ear leaned across to her to say, “Is he always this rude, Vivian?”

           “No. Tom’s changed.”

           “Really?” said Tom. “I’d love to know how.”

           “Should I tell him?” Viv asked.

           “Please do.”

           Before she could, someone said, “He used to be a ski instructor.”

           Another added, “At San Moritz.”

           Then another: “ A ski instructor named Ingrid.”

           “By God that’s right, I’d forgotten.”

            
           “Don’t you remember?”

           Vivian finally got a word in, saying,  “I liked him better as Ingrid, actually.”

           “We all did.”

           “Right.”

           “Well.”

           “At least Ingrid knew her place. “

           Vivian leaned into Pound and asked confidentially, “Who are these terrible people?”

           “My supporters.”

           “Your what?”

           “My supporters.”

           “Of which there seem to be plenty. All very male, and all of them drunk.  Your supporters indeed, you sound like a politician”

           Pound explained that he was taking Tom’s poem "The Waste Land" from one publisher’s office to the next and so strange was it all that he’d had to enlist the support of just about every literary luminary who still owed him a favor. He said to ensure the largest turn out possible he bribed anyone in Tom’s favor with a pint of whisky to get them to write on the manuscript’s behalf, and bribed anyone against Tom with a quart of the same, this in the hope it might make them too drunk to raise their voice or bother with pen and paper. That’s how he got his own work published, he said.

           “Does it really work?”

           “Every time.”

           “Are you that afraid you’ll never publish again?”

           “Just the opposite, confidentially. I’m scared silly I’ll publish and be exposed as a fraud.”

           “You’re not really lobbying publishers on Tom’s behalf, are you?”

           “I’m afraid so. It’s like loading the gun with which he’ll be shot. I suppose you think I’m foolish.”

           “I’m foolish as well.  It’s fine.  Thanks for being a good sport about Tom’s little scribblings. I’m not sure what we’d do without Tom to remind us of how unhappy we should be with the state of the world, or how foolish we must be to marry. Wives, Pound, there’s the problem, they’re distant and cold. And in my case, unstable.”

           “Thanks for the warning.”

           “You’re very welcome.”

            
           “Tom just craves the limelight. He has a nose for it, actually. Look at him down there, holding court.”

           “You mean Tom’s a social climber?” Viv asked.

           Forster overheard this as he was returning from lav and said in passing that Tom was thought by their friends to be the worst sort of social climber actually, which, in the circles in which they ran, was to say the most obvious, not the most avaricious or venal, since both avarice and venality were understood to be strengths of character in the British but not so much in Americans, though it seemed perfectly clear this was only the opinion of those who had met Tom in passing alone. In any case, it was perfectly absurd since social climbers were—by definition—eager for the good opinion of their social betters, always aping the ways and manners of those they admired, ever-eager to be acknowledged and noticed, while anyone with whom Tom was truly intimate recognized Tom was much too self-involved and too acutely self-absorbed to be aware of anyone but Tom himself, let alone concerned with their opinions or their place in the world.

            
           “You sound stung from your tone. It’s not that he’s leaving you high and dry is it, and you’ll have to replace him with another acolyte?”

           “No, this I’m afraid is personal.”

           “Oh that sounds worse yet. He hasn’t broken your heart, has he?”

           “Broke my what?”

           “I’ll teach him a lesson, if he has. He’s very attractive. Nothing to be ashamed of.  Just because one has sex with men doesn’t make them queer does it.”

           Pound said, “Really? It doesn’t? Thank God. That’s such a relief.”

            
           “It’ll give us something in common. I’ve had sex with men more times than I can count. Does that make me a lesbian?”

           “You’re quite the flirt, Viv,” said Joyce, taking a chair from another table and pulling it close to hers.

           “Oh, I’m much worse than that. It’s well-documented.  I am positively mad and a consistent disruption to Tom and his art.”

           “Yes?”

           “I make his life a perfect hell. Isn’t that clear from what you’ve seen this evening?”

           “Actually I thought you were flirting with me.”

           “Only because I was. I’m not wasting my time with you am I, you don’t like boys?”

            “Moi?”

            “Toi.”

           “I find I do best with the Irish when they share my liberal views. Yours aren’t particularly liberal, I suppose.”

           “Not particularly.”

           Viv said, “No, I thought not.”

           “Your Tom’s the worst sort of prig, you know that, don’t you, Viv?”

           “What?”

           “Tom of course,” said Joyce. ”He’s a prig. The worst sort, I was saying. Look at him now, laughing and joking. He’s always laughing at something, or someone, your husband; it’s no wonder, he’s an American, loves re-inventing himself. The minute he has to face himself in a mirror, he wants to be someone else, and virtually anyone else will do. That’s why he can’t hold a job. The sad thing is he’s completely conventional, the most ordinary person I’ve ever met, and he hasn’t a clue at all that he is.”

           Vivian cut Joyce off, saying they must be speaking of two different Toms, thinking to herself that for whatever reason Mr. Joyce here genuinely disliked her husband, and the truth was that Tom thought ill of him  as well. She could not help but think that whatever had transpired to make them get under one another’s skin this way spoke directly to her interests. Certainly it was helping to make Joyce attractive to her. Maybe dangerously so, for she went on to say that Tom was the least conventional person she’d ever met, but in a tone meant to let Joyce know that she was egging him on, for she could feel Tom’s eyes upon them, glaring at them from the table’s other end.

           “What are you two whispering about?” called Tom. “You’re not seducing my wife, are you?”

            
           “To the contrary,” said Viv, “I’m seducing him.” She took from her purse a pen and piece of paper.  “See, I’m writing out my address and my phone number. I’ve been trying to get him to flee you literary cretins and come back to our place, but he’s damnably resistant.”

            
           She slipped the paper before Joyce.

            
           “What does it really say?” asked Tom.

            
           Pound snatched the paper away, stood, and read it aloud: TO THE BEARER OF THIS NOTE. I WILL SLEEP WITH YOU ON THE PROVISION THAT YOU HELP MY HUSBAND PUBLISH HIS POEM "THE WASTE LAND," SO AT LAST HE CAN BE DONE WITH THIS AND GET BACK TO HIS BANKING.