Skyscraper by Faith Baldwin

arrived in the living-room with a glass of pale milk in one hand and a chicken bone in the other.
    â€œFor God’s sake,” said Jennie blankly, “didn’t they feed you tonight?”
    â€œAnd how! Darling, such food! Cocktails, caviar in blocks of ice, super-soup, sole Marguery, partridge, wine, hearts of lettuce, individual Alaskas—”
    â€œStop, you’re driving me crazy!”
    Jennie fled to the icebox, returning bearing a ravaged-looking bone, fixed Lynn with a reproachful eye. “And I had spaghetti and beer!” she said.
    â€œGood time?”
    â€œNo. Yes. I’ve got to stop seeing Slim. He’s serious and poor. I’m getting to like him, sort of. Darned if I know why. First thing you know I’ll go soft on the situation and he’ll have me living in a hen coop in Jersey yet. Not for this baby.”
    Lynn, not listening, said excitedly, “Jennie, it was a most marvelous party, really. Look, gardenias”—she gestured toward the little vase—“and bridge—and Scarletti sang—”
    â€œHow’s the new boy friend?”
    â€œBoy friend?” Lynn’s eyes were wide.
    â€œDrop the lashes over the baby stare. Dwight, the lad who gets ‘em out of the hoosegow, for a price.”
    â€œOh, he’s a dear,” said Lynn wholeheartedly.
    â€œHuh,” said Jennie, gnawing a bone. “Exit Tom.”
    â€œJennie, don’t be absurd—as if Tom could ever—as if Mr. Dwight—oh, you’re crazy,” cried Lynn, entangled in odds and ends of sentences.
    â€œYeah. Crazy like a fox, that’s me!”
    â€œBut Jennie, he’s married, he’s way over forty, he isn’t the least bit interested in me. Besides, I love Tom!” Lynn reminded her, flaming.
    â€œI know you love Tom,” said Jennie soothingly. “But the rest of it doesn’t make sense. Married? What does that mean? Way over forty—that’s a good laugh, too! And of course he isn’t interested in you; he sends you gardenias out of charity. Only, I’m telling you that Mr. David Dwight is just about as harmless as a serpent.”
    â€œHe asked me,” remarked Lynn, subsiding slightly, “to bring you to one of his parties.”
    â€œHe did? Well,” said Jennie, slinging the bone with accuracy into the scrap basket, “that’s the best news I’ve heard since the stock market crashed and show girls lost their stables. How about catching a little sleep?”

 
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7
    ON THE KNEES OF THE GODS
IT WAS A LONG TIME BEFORE LYNN SLEPT. JENNIE’S idiocies were barbed. Absurd, impossible to think thatDwight was personally interested in her, Lynn Harding. Why should he be, with all the world from which to choose? She liked him frankly enough. But she hadn’t a significant thought for anyone but Tom. Perhaps she’d been foolish to think this evening so important. It had gone to her head a little. It had been so differently from anything she had ever experienced. If Dwight had made pretty speeches to her it was because his profession was, partly, speechmaking, and because he said just such things to every woman he met. Tomorrow night she would see Tom again, and tell him about the party, and for a little while she would remember it with pleasure and then she’d forget it; and that was that.
    She smiled, and, suddenly as a child, fell fathoms deep into sleep.
    Blocks away, David Dwight was walking, still softly as a cat, about his library. Wilkins, yawning, waited discreetly in the background to see his employer into bed. Dwight looked at a small gold clock on his desk. Not yet two o’clock. He knew several all-night clubs. Not worthwhile to go there, he said to himself yawning, but he had never felt less like sleep in his life.
    A pretty girl. But he had known girls and women far prettier. An intelligent girl. That didn’t mean much either; he had known