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fully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster. (Earnestly)
You know how difficult it is. I needn’t tell you.
ZOE: (Flattered) What the eye can’t see the heart can’t
grieve for. (She pats him) Come.
BLOOM: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cra-
dle.
ZOE: Babby!
BLOOM: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a
caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its
bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling
and lisping) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE: Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she
captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the pass-
touch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold
gizzard.
(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads
him towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her arm-
pits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose
sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that
have possessed her.)
THE MALE BRUTES: (Exhaling sulphur of rut and dung
and ramping in their loosebox, faintly roaring, their drugged
heads swaying to and fro) Good!
(Zoe and Bloom reach the doorway where two sister
whores are seated. They examine him curiously from under
their pencilled brows and smile to his hasty bow. He trips
awkwardly.)
ZOE: (Her lucky hand instantly saving him) Hoopsa!