Handkerchiefs, hairpins, some paint to put on fingernails, a mirror, a file, some pills to keep women from feeling cramps, some other pills to be taken if they don’t feel them, a photograph, a couple of letters, a packet of matches … it’s as dull a collection of junk as I’ve ever seen. I’m disappointed, and so is Arthur.
You’d have thought we’d at least have got a drink or two out of it.
We read the letters. They are too dull to finish. The photograph is somewhat better … . a smiling blonde cunt who is pretty much on the juicy side. Arthur turns the picture over and over while he looks at the address on the letters. What do I think, he wants to know … is this the cunt who owns the purse? Does she look like that name? Isn’t she just the kind of a cunt who would be named Charlotte? She looks good for a fuck doesn’t she?
The address is in the neighborhood … we can walk there in a few minutes …
and Arthur wants to take the purse there and see if we can get a peep at the cunt. The least she can do, he says, is give us a drink, and if she’s a whore, maybe a fuck … . maybe both, Arthur says, it’s a good purse.
“But suppose she’s a hag,” I ask him. “I don’t need a fuck so badly that I’m going to ride an old hag just to keep you company.”
She’s no hag, Arthur says. Even if she isn’t the girl in the picture, no hag would know a girl who looked like that. The cunt sticks together, Arthur says positively. But even if she is a hag, there’s always a chance of a drink, and we don’t have to fuck her.
“I don’t know, Art… . I don’t think it will work.” The sun is just warm enough to stir the alcohol in my head, and we sit on our nice comfortable curbstone and think it over. “Maybe if it was one of us it would … but I don’t think we’ll both get a lay out of this. We ought to flip a coin or something like that …”
Arthur won’t hear of it. We found the purse together and we’ll return it together … . either that or he’ll drop it in the postoffice and let them return it.
Besides, what if it was snatched and dropped? He’s going to need a witness or I’m going to need a witness … to prove that it was somebody else who snatched it and took the money. Somehow we get into an argument about who took the money… . .
In the end we both go. On our way we stop off at a bar and have another drink. There we get into another argument, this time about what we’ll do if the cunt isn’t home or if some man opens the door. It is decided at last that if she isn’t home we’ll keep the purse and come back again … if a man receives us we’ll either paste him or hand over the purse, depending on how tough he looks and how drunk we are when we get there.
The concierge is stone deaf and Ernest has to take out one of the letters to show him who we’re looking for before he’ll let us in. Then he shoos us down the hall … . straight back and on the ground floor. We knock and the door opens at once. There’s a piping voice almost at our feet.
Arthur looks at me in consternation and then looks down again. It’s not a child and I don’t suppose you could call it a woman. It’s a midget.
Arthur stammers something and holds out the purse … . . if she can’t understand what he’s saying, she at least recognizes that and knows why we’ve come. She asks us to come in. Arthur nudges me in ahead of him. I feel that we are walking into a doll house… .
We’re offered the drink at once … the woman seems to understand how badly we need one. She leaves us sitting on the couch while she goes out to get it for us.
Neither Arthur nor I can say a word. We look at each other without laughing and then look at the place she has. Some of the furniture, like the couch, is full size … a lot more of it has either been especially made or cut down.
The quart bottle of scotch whisky she brings back looks almost as big as she is. For the fourth or fifth time Arthur explains just how he happened to find the purse … it’s all he can think of to say, and each time he tells the story we’re thanked and made to feel progressively idiotic.
There isn’t anything in the rule books about a situation like this. What in the name of Jesus can you say to a midget, anyway? Obviously they must have things to say, but a midget … shit, those little people live in an entirely foreign world. I wish that we hadn’t come… .
She’s pretty, too. At least, she’s pretty for a midget. She doesn’t look quite so babyish as most of them, either… . She’s more like a tiny copy of an ordinary woman. She has good legs, an ass that you’d have to call cute, and her bubs… . I suppose you’d say they were big for her size. A look at Arthur tells me that he’s taken all this in too… . The whisky is good and makes me feel better. I accept another.
Ten minutes later she’s making goo-goo eyes at us… . She’s asked us about ourselves, what we do, etc., and we’ve been told that she’s resting between circus tours. All in that high thin and rather sweet voice which reminds me of some kind of a bird. I give Arthur the sign–it’s no good sticking around here–and we make as hasty an exit as we can with decency. Won’t we please call back again sometime, she says as we go. Her name is Charlotte… . Charlotte… .
Arthur and I march in a beeline for the nearest cafe. Arthur asks a hundred questions, whether of himself or me, I don’t know … . at any rate they’re not answered. Do they have hair like an ordinary woman, he wants to know, how big are their cunts, do they make any kind of a fuck? he rubs his hands together. By Jesus, if he only had the nerve to go back there and find out … . she was willing wasn’t she, Alf? She was ready to be laid, wasn’t she, Alf?
We sit for a long time at a table and let the saucers pile up. I keep trying to imagine what she would be like in bed, of those tiny fingers playing with your dick, and all the rest of it, and the title of it runs over and over my brain like a trickle of water. Afternoon with an Elf… .
Toots comes to see me for she is going away … leaving Paris and perhaps for good. With her American, of all people. She and Henry have come to some sort of an agreement… . I can’t discover whether they are to be married or not, but it appears that they are. Being a very practical person, Henry has concluded that having Toots around is a very cheap form of insurance against any unpleasantness which might otherwise arise out of his attraction to people like Peter. He’s taking her to London and from there probably to America.
Toots tells me this sitting on my bed while I finish shaving, for she has called rather early. What do I think of it, she wants to know? I try to think of what I think of it, but it’s altogether too much effort.
After a pause Toots asks, too casually, for Anna’s address … she’d like to say good-bye. I pretend that I don’t know, Anna moves about so much. That cunt! If she’d come out and say that she wanted to play head-to-tail with Anna, I might give her the address.
Toots goes out with me while I have breakfast. The service is remarkably improved this morning … . that’s another value of a cunt as beautiful to look at as Toots. But I have no appetite. Toots is beautiful and I’ve laid her, and now she’s going away … who could eat under those circumstances? It does not help to remind myself that I’m not in love with Toots, never have been and never could be … I ought to be in love with her, that’s what counts, and I ought to feel terrible. Out of sheer sympathy for the person, I’m not, I have no appetite. It may be a long time before another cunt as lovely as Toots walks into my life … or out of it.
On the street we meet Carl. He looks very forlorn as he walks along with us.
I’m making an appearance at the office, it’s pay day. At the door I hand Toots over to him, thinking I probably will never see her again, but half an hour later, on my way downstairs, I find her waiting in the foyer. She’s ditched Carl, and now she wants to go home
