The guests were met outside the door by two guards, two large, powerful guys. Henry had dressed them in gold embroidered Persian vests which they wore directly over their naked torsos. Henry had found the vests in the basement, where we have dressers taking up an entire wall for storing old things. The muscular fellows were Henry's bodyguards, so to speak, and he ordered them around in every possible way and called them "my slaves," which they permitted without batting an eye. As you will see later on, "my slaves" were part of the setting of the movie they were making and connected with Henry's role in it — he was playing a certain Mostello, a modern Mephistopheles from die state of Connecticut. But apart from the film, those two guys with their simple faces really were his slaves and bodyguards and at his beck and call. I don't know whether they were from poorer families, or whether Henry simply lorded it over them thanks to his intellect and refinement, but I was present for one very unattractive little scene, gentlemen. Before the party actually started, it became clear they didn't have enough sugar for the sangria, mine already having been used up, since they were making an immense vat of it. Henry was paying for everything of course. Taking some money out of his wallet, he dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the floor, on purpose as it seemed to me. Instead of bending over to pick it up himself, he carelessly said to the older of his two bodyguards, "Pick it up!" and the latter obediently picked up the money and ran out to get the sugar dressed in nothing but his pants and Persian vest, from which his powerful shoulders bulged like stones.

Henry-Mephistopheles was playing his papa. He of course didn't have Papa's brutality — Papa humiliated people right and left. He used his wife's lover, the meek opportunist Carl, virtually as a chauffeur, and once in the kitchen in Linda's and my presence had irritably refused to drop Carl, who was sick with a cold, off at his house, although it was on his way. Carl, even though he didn't feel well, had just raced over with a car at Gatsby's request — had driven over one hundred miles with a temperature in order to bring an automobile to his employer and benefactor. The twenty-dollar bill dropped on the floor by Henry completely corresponded in the children's world to the adult situation that had also taken place in the kitchen.

The children gradually spilled into all the crevices and rooms in the house. On the door of my room the farsighted Henry had hung a sign with the words, "Edward's room! Do not Enter!" I circulated among the youths dressed in white sailor's jeans, a black shirt, and boots, and anxiously looked around. I wanted to pick out a girl ahead of time, or even better, several objectives, however tentative, so that after having had something to drink and smoke (in the living room several enthusiasts were delightedly adjusting the hookah which hangs on the wall there), I would then know which target, or targets if there were several, to aim for. I finished my preliminary survey in half an hour, visiting all the rooms and standing for a while among various groups of our merry and lively American youth, but with depressing results, I'm sorry to say.

No, I can't take that one, I thought to myself while looking over a rather pretty girl dressed as a nineteenth-century American lady and even carrying a lace parasol in her hands. A tow-haired guy in a musketeer's outfit kept putting his arm around her waist possessively… And not that one either, I thought, transferring my gaze to another objective, a ridiculously skinny girl-cameraman, who looked like Jenny's sister Debby and had come with the boy who was to be their director. They had slept together the night before, I think, and came into the kitchen in the morning in their pajamas, blushing and ridiculous — sixteen-year-old lovers. That one? A perfect woman of the highest class, well-bred, mysterious, with her dark hair piled up above a beautiful clear face whose features resembled those of the young In-grid Bergman, was looking directly into my eyes with a brazen and provocative gaze. How did this miracle turn up at an adolescent ball? I thought. Is she really only fifteen to seventeen like all the others? That can't be. She not only looks more grown up; she is — a young woman and not a stump, not a pimply American female teenager swollen on doughnuts and sweet rolls or a big-chested, big-assed, and leggy cheerleader, the class beauty, but a young woman in fact, the kind they show in films about the English aristocracy. The stubborn, mad, and willful youngest daughter of the family, the one who reads philosophy books and wildly races around in fast cars. You see, reader, what vulgar stereotypes I think in, what banal myths nourish my servant's imagination.

I was intimidated by the stranger. Cold sweat even broke out on my servant's brow — she seemed so terribly unattainable to me — and the most frightening thing was that I realized she belonged to the same breed as the girl in chinchilla! Around the stranger, who had only just arrived, swarmed all the best of their boys. Even Henry himself came downstairs in a tuxedo and bow tie, and opening his arms wide like his daddy, greeted her and enclosed her in an embrace — behavior and gestures copied to the last detail from Gatsby the elder. I'd like to be in Henry's place and cover her in embraces myself, I thought enviously. Henry greeted her in French, if you can believe it, and the stranger answered him in French too in a voice that was strangely deep for someone so young. Fucking aristocrats.

My spirits sank. Just as they had when I was the same age they were now — a loss of strength and resolve in the face of beauty. Most often those attacks of uncertainty and stupefaction had happened at school dances. I always wanted the very best girl at the dance, naturally, and of course I always stood in the darkest corner of the hall, leaning against the wall and tormenting myself over my cowardice. No, I knew my value, I knew I was "good looking" — the girls had told me. But beauty plunged me into a condition of stupor and numbness. When I finally overcame it, it was already too late — some insolent clod with a budding moustache had already taken my girl by the hand and was telling her inspired lies. Neither then nor now did I doubt for a moment that I was far more interesting and alive than the young or adult clods who make up at least ninety-five percent of the masculine society of any dance, but what difference did that make? It's true that now, aware of the shameful sin of cowardice in myself, I have devised certain measures to overcome it. Thus, I'm fully aware that beautiful women plunge not only me into terror and stupor, but many others, and that they fall to only the boldest, usually the first of the boldest, and I therefore try to be the first. I usually cross the hall or living room with my eyes closed and in a state of utter terror, the main thing being to approach, to overcome the distance between you, and then as soon as I open my mouth, everything falls into place. It doesn't make any difference what you talk about in such a situation — the main thing is simply to emit friendly noises, since in essence we're just highly organized animals. Dogs sniff each other in situations like that or wag their tails.

The swine Henry didn't even introduce me. He had introduced me to a mass of completely useless girl-goblins, but he led that treasure upstairs to the living room without even a glance in my direction to get her some sangria. Walking past, the stranger continued looking at me in the same brazen way — no, no, it didn't just seem to me that she was looking at me; she actually was, which isn't surprising really, I being an adult man and she, despite her age, an adult woman, and the two of us face to face in that crowd of children. As she climbed the stairs, her young ass flexed under her black dress like the prancing rear of a fine young horse — forgive me for this cavalryman's comparison, gentlemen, but that's the way it really was.